Happy Mother's Day!

To all the Mom's in the world Happy Mother's Day! Now that I know my Mom has opened her box I can show you what I sent her this year!
It is a Kusudama ball made from the tutorial on Folding Trees; it's a two part tutorial part 1 and part 2.
I cut each of the 60 squares by hand from coordinating scrapbook paper, I had the right sized origami paper but I really wanted the color to be the same overall with different patterns on the petals. I'm really pleased with the results and my Mom loves it so it was worth all the work.
I really enjoy folding the flowers and have a few of them around, but I think I need to create a ball for myself to take to work and hang by my desk. I have a very small desk so I don't have a lot of desktop space to put things on so this would be perfect!The past few days in the studio have been spent doing lots and lots of prep work, mostly cutting and measuring things. This photo shows everything cut and prepped for the order of folio's for Dark Roast Photography. I have one 3 DVD Folio in the press right now as I couldn't wait to see what they looked like! I love these folio's, they are simple, elegant, and I think a great way to preserve such a wonderful day. This picture can also be found on Flickr with notes about what is strewn around my desk with some commentary. As I said awhile back I moved to google reader to keep up with all the wonderful blogs out in the world and they have a recommendations area in the home page. I had never really noticed it until today when low and behold I found myself!
It makes me wonder how many people out there have found my blog via a reader recommendation and how many people actually have my blog on an RSS feed. The blogger gadget says that I have 3 followers but I would like to think there are many more of you out there on RSS readers.
Ah the things I think about while I'm working away in my studio. I also discovered today that while I work much better with music on in the studio I don't actually listen to it. I spent 4 hours working today and when I finished I realized I had been listening to the same album for the whole time!

Head Fog & Pictures!

I've been falling behind in sharing some of my newest creations. Mostly because I've had a sinus infection and have been living in a serious state of head fog. I'm staring to come out of it today but am still feeling very scattered. I had this whole list of things I was going to accomplish today, I got up at a reasonable hour and just did random things until noon!

Around noon I contemplated lunch and saw an old crochet project laying in the corner and picked up determined to triumph over it. I've got a good hand on it now, I need to make more "yarn" before I can finish it... I realize that is vague I promise to share photo's when I'm all done!

See what I mean about scattered I'm already way off topic! Back to the new books and pictures! Above is a new portable photo album! I love this green velvet paper, the texture is so fantastic and the organza ribbon is the perfect touch!
Next up the new style of folio I'm working on! This one is currently for sale in my shop as it is not the materials I will be using for the next order. This was a trial run to make sure that both myself and Leslie liked the way it looked. The new ones will have the same linen cloth along the spine, but will have a lovely brown silk cloth instead.

This green journal was the first in my "A Couch I Was" series of books. Remember the couch I tore apart in the fall? Well I'm finally starting to use the leather from it. I say was because almost immediately after I listed this one I got a request for a custom order for this journal larger and in sketch book form! The sketchbook is happily on it's way to it's new home but I think I will create another like it as I liked the look of the two buttons!
Phew... 2 more stay with me! This one I also love, I've been making thicker books lately and this one clocks in at 1lb 6oz (.62kg) which is awesome. I think I've said it before but I love holding a good thick book. This book also features a great handmade paper for the covers, I find that I'm becoming more of a snob when purchasing paper. I have been buying more handmade papers and less commercially printed papers. Lastly we have a fun pair of earrings! I love the gold hoops with the little hearts in them and I love how it brings the paper and the hearts together as well. They are from an Italian handmade paper (again see the handmade part) and I love the different shades of blue.

Ok now that I've overloaded all of you I'm going to run to twitter so that I overload others :)

Twittering

I can now be found on Twitter under KileysBooks. I would love to follow any of you out there on the webs, you can either add me on Twitter or leave a comment here.

You might also notice that I've been working on the side bar on the blog. I have temporarily removed all the links I had as my blog reading is out of hand and many of the links on this page were not current or sites I frequented anymore. There are currently 31 blogs in my reader, but I expect that number to grow. Tulibri has a fantastic list of bookbinding blogs on her blog, and I keep finding more and more blogs to read via her recommendations! I'll work on bringing the links back when I've caught up on a few other things.

I'm off to finish my mothers day present, I had planned to share photo's with everyone but I just found out that my mom reads my blog from time to time so that has to wait for a week!

Folio's Away

Tuesday morning I pulled the last of Brie's dvd folio's out of the press, shot a few photo's and sent them on their way. It was really rewarding to see them all lined up and finished.

I always try to send a little something extra with all my packages and sales from my shop. If I have the time I always try to personalize what is going into each package as well. For Brie I used a strip of paper that was used to make one of the folio's and her pink book cloth to make a business card holder. The card holder is a Blizzard Book which is a fun little structure, the way this one is put together you can fold it up and tie the ribbon to keep it in your bag, or open it up and lay it on a desk or a counter to display your cards. If I decide to do any shows this summer I will be making one of these to hold my own cards.

Next on my plate is an order for Leslie of Dark Roast Photography her folio's will be designed differently from Brie's and I hope to have a mock up completed this afternoon. Her book cloth has is in transit and I am anxiously awaiting it's arrival. Leslie chose a chocolate brown silk cloth and an ivory damask paper, the combination is going to look fantastic together and I am really excited to get started on them!

Busy Girl

I realized the other day that I didn't say much around here last week, but that's because I was a busy girl! I spent most of the week working on the first folio order and when I wasn't working on those I was working on these fantastic watercolor journals.
These were custom order for a specific paper and I love how they came out. There is always something to be said for a book with some girth to it and watercolor paper is great for girth. This was also my first time sewing the Celtic Weave stitch with the same colored thread. Having 4 needles all with the same color thread was quite a challenge. The first book took me a little over two hours to sew up, however towards the end of the first book I devised a system for managing the 10 needles on the book. The second book greatly benefited from the learning adventure of the first :)
The pair are happily on their way to their new home, if you want to take a peek there are more pictures here.

This week finds me contemplating doing a local show in June, from what I've been told the show is hit or miss and the crowd will either really like or really not be interested in my stuff- no one is really sure which will be the case. I'm going to go check out the May show on Friday to see what I can dig up.
I also have another order for folio's in the pipeline, I'm waiting for the cloth from to arrive. To keep me busy until then I picked up a box making kit at Paper Source this weekend and hope get is assembled to share soon.
Tomorrow I'll be photographing the folio's as a set so hopefully I'll have some fun photo's to share!

Etsy Day!

Today is Etsy Day! Yay!

I love Etsy, the community that is has grown, the friends I have made, and all the wonderful opportunities it has given me. Today I gladly celebrate Etsy day, and invite you do to the same!

Presses and Beach Trip!

I had a fantastic weekend that I didn't talk about at all yesterday! Saturday my husband and I took advantage of the first nice weekend and ran to the coast. We packed a picnic lunch and used our picnic set for the first time. I think we've had it for two years and never remembered to bring it with us!


After lunch we cruised up 101 looking for an area with tide pools as tide was out. We almost never make it to the coast on days when low tide is in the afternoon so we were very excited!

We spend a larger part of the afternoon at a park I can't remember the name of as we had never stopped there before, but we had a great time. We found a few pools and stuck the camera in the water proof case and got some really fantastic pictures. Once we finished with the pools I went back to the beach and dug around in the sand by the river for agates.

Sunday we got up to another wonderful day and got to work outside making me some much needed larger presses for my folio production.

For years I've had two small book presses that can press one or two books at a time as that is all I have ever needed. As I said one of my two presses is too small for the 3 pocket presses so a trip to the man's mall fixed my problem!
We bought two 2'x4' pieces of MDF and sliced them in half to give me 2' square presses. Once we had the 2' boards we drilled 6 holes in each and put in carriage bolts and wing nuts and voila, new presses!

What you can see in the pictures are my two new presses next to my old "large" press. The middle press is currently pressing a round of folios the other two had just been emptied and quality checked.

The box is full of folios who so far have been quality checked, which means I've stuck a DVD in each pocket, closed it up, and tied it closed. I can't wait to have them all finished so I can take pictures of the large stacks all tied up and pretty. Although I do like the look of all the ribbon loose in the box as well!

Sorry for the picture jumble... I guess that is the problem with making the pictures bigger, I now have more images than I have words for!