Success!

My first class was a smashing success! We had more people than we had spots for so I think it's safe to say that I will be running the intro class again. I have the two night leather class coming up on the 23rd and 30th and I think there are just a few spots left!
After I get my school schedule I plan on running an advanced ribbon hinge class which will have the intro class as a pre-requisite. Either way I am extremely excited.

In other exciting news my birthday is this weekend! I still don't have any solid plans, just excited! I already have my first present- and I opened it- because I knew what it was... My mom has this thing of making us pick out our presents now... I got volume 5 in the Keith Smith series Quick Leather Bindings. That leaves me needing volume 4 only, which I am actually quite interested in as I will be taking photography this term and will need a way to bind all those single sheets.

As some of you may have devised from the comments a few posts ago I have been having problems with my carpal tunnel and sadly it's kept me from doing any work in my studio or much of anything at all. The good news is that it's getting better and hopefully I'll be back to work with in the next week or so!

Jitters

I know I said it was time to slow down in my last post... and I did as far as blogging and binding were concerned but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy!
Last week was spent getting my husbands classroom ready for school. We built and installed new whiteboards and built him a new podium and worked on decorating his room a bit too. He was a roving teacher last year so the classroom is very exciting.

I've also been busy gearing up to start teaching! Eek! I start Tuesday and last week there were a sad 2 people signed up for my first class and no one signed up for my second. Last night was the First Friday Art Walk in downtown Eugene and where I will be teaching was right in the middle. We decided very last minute (Thursday afternoon) that to drum up some enrollment I should come down and show.
We might have been a bit too successful and are looking at having to schedule a second introduction class!

Fall has had quick entry in to town this year, the mornings are crisp and we have had a few mornings where the fog was settling gently on the hill around us. The leaves are just starting to turn color and it's a wonderful time of year. It's a hard time of year to be inside working as you know the last of the sunny days are limited and that the rain is not far off.

I have been doing just a little bit of work in the shop. I got a great new recycled leather journal listed and have been struggling with how to create a book strap with a cross strap. The long strap I have plently of ideas for, its the cross strap that's throwing me for a loop. Anyone have any experience making them?

Time to Slow Down

I've been working pretty hard the last few weeks and now I finally have the pictures to prove it! The pictures in this post is part of the wholesale order I've been feverishly working away on. I love the picture of all the leather journals. The red one in the middle is by far my favorite. I didn't purposefully mean for it to be centered and the eye catcher of the picture, but it's funny how your subconscious works like that.

In other news I need to start getting ready for the classes I'll be teaching in less than 2 weeks! I have all the materials set aside at Mecca, I just need to go in and do some prep work so the covers are cut and the pages are all the right size.

It's been grey and kinda rainy since we had our heat wave and it's been kinda nice. Not to hot and surprisingly not to humid either. It's been a nice change, albeit rather strange. One of my brothers ended up in town on business yesterday and had a long lunch so we went to play some disc golf and I ended up with totally soaked shoes as the course was covered in standing water.

Now that I've completed the large order I need to go restore order to my studio and get some work done for my own store!

Productive Weekend

I've had a crazy productive weekend! I have all the leather and cloth covers completed for my wholesale order, half the paper for the text blocks folded and punched, and all of the brag and chopstick books done!
I also sold the build your own kimono book listing on Friday so I got that book constructed and finished as well!
It doesn't end there...
Have you ever spent an entire weekend locked in your studio to look up and find that every surface is totally covered in stuff and absolutely none of your floor can be seen?
Well thats exactly what happened to me. So I decided to clean the studio up as well.
Should have stopped there... but I didn't. I'm working on my first set of ATC's for a swap at the Book Arts Forum and I have been wanting to try coffee staining for some time so I boiled up some water- I don't actually own a coffee pot- and threw some coffee in. I crumpled the pages hoping that the "bruised" paper would stain darker. Sadly that didn't work out as I had hoped and the pages aren't as dark as I thought. I think I'm gonna dunk them a second time tomorrow to see if I can get them darker.

Sometime in the middle of all my crafting today I also got a new book listed on Etsy! It's a lovely recycled leather sketchbook. You can see the upclose detail of the part I love above. It has this one little corner where you can see the layers what went into tanning the hide.

I'm off to see if the kimono book is dry in my press yet and hopefully get some photo's of it before I'm off to bed.

Scrumptious Leather

The award giving caused quite a stir around here yesterday and I couldn't be more pleased! I had a record setting day for site traffic and possibly for comments as well!
Which could be viewed as the motivation for today, but it isn't- today I have this scrumptious leather journal to share with you. This journal, along with all the leather journals I will be posting and making for the next few months, are made from upholstery scraps. Which while they are luscious leathers sadly I have no information about them. I don't know what kind of animal they are of what kind of a finish they have on them.
This book is the structure I will be teaching in my upcoming classes at MECCA. MECCA should be releasing more details soon, but the first class will be September 9th and the leather workshop will run September 23rd and 30th.

My local Etsy street team held a meeting last night and we had a special guest stop by and I got some really fun toys. I don't have the energy or pictures to discuss it yet, but it's exciting. I'm packing up for a weekend trip to the Coast and Portland so I'll see you guys next week!

Busy Busy Me

I haven't forgotten you all! I promise!

I've just been really, really busy. It's trade show season at work, and if you have ever worked in the wholesale industry you understand what I mean.
It's also summer craft show time and I've done two in the last two weeks. Which is CRAZY for me. While I don't see my Etsy shop as a hobby (it's more a fledgling business) I've never gotten heavy into the craft market here. I had the show I had posted about last time which was a good day with friends and other vendors despite the crazy wind and bugs. While there the opportunity came up for me to do a recycled craft fair the next weekend. I jumped at the chance as it was a new venue and more time with good friends.
I got home and realized my recycled item stock was lower then I remembered and had a week to get stocked up.
I finally got to working with the pieces of scrap upholstery leather to make some leather journals and sketch books. I also did some crazy silk screening and sewing to make some rockin' recycled tote bags (no pictures yet sorry!).
While all of this was a blast I was so tired by the time the show was over I was ready to fall over as I haven't had a day since we got home from vacation where I wasn't working all day. And that is why I've not said a word in over a week. I've been crafting like a crazy lady.

The good news is that as soon as my camera and laptop become friends again I'll have some great new items to post in the ol' shop.

In the madness of the last week I was also awarded the "Arte y pico" blog award by Rhonda!

Thanks Rhonda!

Here is how the award works:
1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributing to the blogger community, no matter what language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3) Each award-winner, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4) Award-winners and the one who has given the prize should to show the link to the Arte y pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5) To show these rules.

Between getting this award, and finally getting around to posting about it I found out that it's not against the rules to give the award to someone who already has it! Which is great because I was starting to get stressed out!
My picks (in totally random order) for the award are:

Billie of Billie's Craft Room- Billie is a UK craft who does the most amazing things with ranger inks (don't worry I don't know what they are either!) and has recently joined the book arts forum and brings lots of great energy and ideas.

Chelsea of 88 Words- She's a very prolific blogger & her blog is always a good read and while I
don't comment as often as I should you can be sure I stop by everyday!

Bev of La Paperie & Cozy- Bev makes amazing leather journals filled with wonderful quotes and other things. My personal favorite of her shows my true inner geek, it had the Periodic table of elements in the front instead of a quote. It's sold, but I'm sure she would make you another one!

Aly of Bliss Monkey Studio- Aly's blog is a double dirty pleasure of mine- not only is her blog filled with fantastic stories of urban chickens and water ballon fights, but she has great stories about things in my own community I had no clue even existed!

Kevin of Library Preservation- Kevin probably doesn't know I read his blog on a regular basis. I've never left a comment but I love his blog. It's for the true geek in me, the one that longs to work on wet, damaged, well loved, or unloved books. I would love to have his day job "spends some of my time conserving rare and not so rare items. I also regularly teach book repair to Michigan library staff, and am a part-time faculty at Wayne State University, teaching introduction to preservation."
That is exactly what I aspire for some day.....

Ok not too bad, only one person that already has the award- but that's because I've been looking for a reason to share Billie's blog with you.

Hopefully I wont' be such a stranger between posts for the rest of the summer!

Crafty Overload

This week has been good for nourishing my crafty side. It was the last week of classes here and while I'm totally stressed out for my finals next week I've managed to get a lot done that isn't related to school.

Ok so the first project is kind of related to school- The fabric pieces are a tote bag, and a tote bag in progress! I finally ahead of the game in silk screening for once and I got to play around with fabric for the first time. The bag with the cassettes is finished while the bag with the reels still needs to be sewn together. I screened the fabric during our last class on Thursday and everyone was really envious, I think mostly because I was done and could play around, might also be because I bought shiny purple ink to play with.

As you can see in the second picture I have lots and lots of ink to start playing with. I also bought myself a photo emulsion kit, but that will have to wait until I get a scooper and a bigger squeegee.

In other exciting news this week our local crafty materials exchange MECCA sent out a news letter this week saying they had gotten in some upholstery leather scraps so I ran in as soon as they opened the next day and took a large pile to start playing with leather again.
The topic came up of why I want large scraps of leather and I told Mija I was a book binder. She got really excited and we started talking about me teaching classes there over the summer! I think I'll be teaching in late July/early August, I'll keep you posted as I come up with more of the details! I'm really excited to have the opportunity I just need to come up with what classes I want to teach and how I want to structure them....