BEST Cares!

The BEST Street team's first charity event officially began Monday, February 18 2008. Members of the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team have generously donated books for sale. 100% of the proceeds, minus fees and shipping costs will be donated to H.E.L.P International. If you want to help, simply click on purchase the lovely handcrafted books featured on the BEST Blog.

I'll be making a book sometime this week to help the cause! I went on a little vacation this weekend and when I got back the event was in full swing! The photo up top is one I shot this weekend enjoying two amazing sunsets on the beach. I always love spending time on the Oregon Coast. We spent two days in Manzanita which included side trips to Seaside and Tillamook where we went to the Tillamook and the Blue Heron Creameries. The Blue Heron Creamery has a petting zoo and we had lots of fun feeding and petting all various animals they had. It's a very different experience from the larger Tillamook factory.

You make my day!

Rhonda, of My Handbound Books blog has passed along the "you make my day award" award to me a few days ago and I've been to sick to acknowledge it!

The award comes with some rules so here they are:
-Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make your day
-Acknowledge the post of the award giver
-Tell the award winners that they've won by commenting on their blogs

Ok so five blogs I read with some sort of regularity.... I hate to admit that I don't get to read the blogs I want to as often as I want to.... So.... eighty8words is a blog that I always enjoy reading. Other blogs I frequent are the BEST team blog, the Kilgarlin Center at UT Austin, and recently I've started reading the Library of Congress Blog. Ummm one more blog.... I often check the Unofficial Etsy News pretty often.

I'm gonna break the rules as this point and not pass it along as the only blog that I think might respond to it is eighty8words and I 'm honestly too sick to tag everyone.

I did manage to finally edit some photo's while sitting in my sickness and the lovely photo album above is now up for grabs in my store.

Sticky Fingers

I finally got to spend some time playing in my papers again today. I made an absolute mess of my work space, got glue everywhere and in the end had some very sticky fingers from trying to wipe it all up with my hands. Needless to say I had some serious fun this afternoon.
The fruits of my labor is this great little brag book and the start of a new photo album. The covers for the new photo album are in the press drying right now and I have the paper cut, punched, and ready to just be sewn in.
My time in my studio today reignited my love for fine Japanese papers. The photo album I was working is made from a wonderful Japanese paper- but I honestly don't know enough about it to let you know what it's really called. I've seen the same sheet of paper labeled as washi, yutzen, and chiogami in different art stores and don't have a clue what the difference between them is. I do know that I love to work with Japanese papers and I might start burning through the stash I have hiding in my paper closet! Look for details of the photo album later this week!

More about me!

Chelsea of Eighty8words has a great interview with me up on her wonderful blog. I absolutely love her work and can't wait until I have the money to splurge on one of her amazing pendants. I think the one pictured to the right is my favorite she has listed right now. Be sure to stop by her blog to read about the things I don't think to post on my own blog!

Snow Day!

It is a rare day in the Southern Willamette valley when it snows, even rarer when it snows and sticks. It's been 12 years since it has snowed and had this much stick!
This is me in the process of completing the snowman my husband and I created yesterday. We had a blast in our romp in the snow and it made us wish we had sleds.
As we never get this much snow we both also had snow days from school! Which is good because I have my chem lab to finish before tomorrow and this will give me some time to work on a custom order in the works.

Busy Girl

I've been so busy with school and work for the past two weeks that I had almost forgotten about my poor lonely blog!

I haven't been doing much binding at all lately and was really starting to get me down. I had my book arts group Tuesday night and it was just what I needed to get moving again!
I taught this great little structure to the rest of our group. It is done using a very simple linked stitch which can be seen in greater detail here.

The books pictured here are for my co-workers. I made them from a paper that our products from Kenya often come wrapped in. I've been wanting to make books with the paper for a long time but it is too waxy to take glue, and when I learned this structure last month I knew it was perfect. Each book is folded down from one sheet of paper and the cover forms a pocket that you tuck the other part of the paper into. Hard to explain in words, but works out to be very neat. Fingers crossed that everyone at work likes these little blotters as much as I do!

All about me!

Today I was featured on the wonderful blog of Quirky'nBerkeley, it's a great quick read all about me and why I do what I do. Quirky'nBerkeley's has some great cards in her shop but my favorite item by far has to be her adorable origami boxes! (seen to the right)

In other exciting news I'll be in Seattle this weekend! While that may keep me away from my great paper stash that I got for Christmas, it will be a much needed vacation before school starts. It's been a crazy start to the new year at work and I could use some serious decompression time before school starts on Monday!