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Archive for December, 2008

personal problems

I’m normally not so consistently crafty, but I’ve been doing a lot for the holidays.

personal problems

personal problems

I printed off (using up all my printer ink in the process!) and bound some of my favorite journal spreads. It was a gift for my BF – mostly to prove that my journal isn’t as interesting or secret-filled as it may seem. I put in a blank signature at the end and used it as I would my actual journal…which means the pages are pretty lame. Heh. Obviously I only bound up my favorites so this is definitely way more pleasing than the real thing. ;P

I actually really liked how it came out, it was cool seeing all the spreads together rather than spread out over various different books. The pages seemed a little dull though – probably a result of the colors being a little washed out during scanning.

Apparently “that sounds like a personal problem” is one of my catchphrases, so the obvious title for this was these sound like personal problems. ;P

…I kind of wish I’d made one for myself too. :)

Dragon Book

This is just a little something I put together for a friend. The structure is loosely based on the star tunnel book by Shereen LaPlantz from The Art & Craft of Handmade Books. And by “based on” I mean “I looked at the picture in the book and then went in a different direction.” I was mostly interested in the idea of this…. weaving concertina IDK what to call it.

Dragon Book

Dragon Book Detail

It’s a pretty simple little thing but I like the colors and the shapes the papers create. Also, I was experimenting with taking the pictures on a white background – pretty classy huh? ;p Except in the bottom one because of the angle (I didn’t have enough white paper, heh)

cookie bakin'

cookies

This is the sort of crap I do on my days off. I was going to give these cookies to our neighbors for the holidays (we have not really interacted in the 6-ish months we’ve been living here) but I’ve decided to keep these and give the neighbors a card instead. This is what the card will look like:

LOLcats know my life.

journal makin'

done!

It looks like this one is done! There are several pockets inside so I’ve crammed a bunch of stuff in there which is why it pops open so much.

A few months ago I made my first journal for myself because I really wanted a 5.5x8ish (ie the size of a folded piece of printer paper) journal filled with heavy paper. I could find the size but not the right paper, or vice versa. I finally decided to get over my dislike of binding blank books (because I can never get the text blocks as tight as I like, although I’ve improved a lot after making a couple of these) and made my own. Now I’m addicted to them. This is the fourth journal I’ve made for myself – a size I like, filled with 120lb watercolor paper. I can use all the water, glue, beeswax, stitching and paint I want and it puts up with it.

new - skulls

BTW I love this paper. It’s from K&Company which seems to put out a lot of really cute packs. This is from a Halloween one and I should have bought more than one at the time. :(