9 September 2007
OT: Bookbinding but Not Part of My KSProject
Posted by Lady Artisan under: General Bookbinding .
Ok, let me just get the excuses over with:
1. I’m trying to sell enough items to turn this into a real business instead of just a money drain. Takes work and promoting (something I’m rather unskilled at) and then more work and signing up to participate in events that might actually get your shop exposure which means more work….Well, I’m sure you see why this is excuse is in here.
2. Although this probably fits under #1 pretty easily, I’m padding my list here, so just deal with it. Shows; three of them. One is out of state (no, I’m not going, just shipping stuff there for it) and two here in San Antonio. Which means I gotta make stuff and lots of it. Well, maybe not tons and tons but enough to fill a table and still have some items in my Etsy shop.
3. Family (especially children) actually require time–you have to feed them, clean up after them (not just the children, either), bathe them, do their laundry, grocery shop for them and actually spend time with them, interacting.
4. We’re working on selling our property and finding a new place, preferably near Austin or Wimberly. Ok, so the selling part doesn’t actually require any time on my part since we have real estate agent doing it for us, but it does take work to go property-shopping even if I also happen to enjoy road trips and looking at houses.
5. San Antonio Polymer Clay Guild–after only having been in the guild for three months, some smart person realized that I’m one of those people who can’t say “no” when it comes to volunteering to help a group that I’m active with, so they got me to run for Secretary. Having been an executive secretary for over 12 years, you’d think I would have immediately realized that this means A LOT more work than I should be volunteering my time on when I have this idea for starting a business in the back of my mind. That was almost two years ago. My term is nearing it’s end and I still find myself wondering at times why I’ve stuck with it but I plan on seeing it through to the end. And how does this fit into my excuse list? We’re doing a complete revamp of the bylaws and guess who gets to do the actually upates on what’s been discussed? Plus, a meeting coming up in a couple of weeks which means I have to start thinking about meeting agendas. Yes, I know I’ve been doing this for almost two years and should have some sort of system figured out so it isn’t as time consuming but then I wouldn’t be able to include it in my list of excuses, would I?
6. Etsy, my shop, promotions–yeah, this probably fits under #1, too, but don’t forget that padding thing. I’m helping another bookbinder (a couple actually) set up a street team on Etsy so we can work together at promotions, advertising, and just generally getting the word out to people about our fabulous and exciting bound books, journals, etc. Yep, another “can’t-say-no” because I really think this will be an excellent way of promoting our shops.
7. Another Etsy seller set up a charity project between Etsy and Rape Response Services in Maine and I decided to participate. I currently have two items in my shop where 50% of the proceeds will go to RRS. The first was easy–a ring I already had made. The second was a journal that I started designing in my brain as soon as I signed up to participate. And that’s really what this entry is about now that I’ve wasted so much time on my excuses.
Rape Response Services is based in Maine but I don’t mind being involved in something like this even if it is in a different state. Their website gives a little info about the Etsy project, called Hope and Healing.
Participating gave me some things to think about besides just the design. Although it did start with that. I had some tiles with leaves and flowers impressed in them from when I was doing my massive garden/herbal design journals. I had made some sheets of clay in a number of colors, impressed the natural elements in them, and then cut them into squares. I wasn’t overly particular about them being perfectly even, etc.–I love designs that are a bit more free-form in case you haven’t figured that out by now. After doing the first white and red mosaic journal I had quite a few tiles left over. I figured I could get a 3″ x 4″ mosaic journal out of them.
Then I signed up for Hope and Healing and, for some reason, the phrase “the garden of her heart” came to me and I thought I could do a mosaic heart design with the impressed tiles. Except that the poet in me was already trying to stretch her wings, I guess, because “the garden of her heart” kept being followed by “the strength of her soul” in my mind. And, to me, the phrase fit so well with the project that I couldn’t let it go. So, instead, I decided I’d write a poem to attach to the journal and, hopefully, be able to change the design to really mesh with the poem.
Which is where the tree design came from. I figured plant and garden references pointed to a tree when you’re talking strength and roots and stability. The fruit came into the design when I was drawing it out on graph paper–of course her tree will have fruit so obviously I needed to show that in the picture. With all the additions to the design, I knew that 3″ x 4″ wasn’t going to cut it so I upped the size to 5″ x 7″ which, of course, meant I needed more tiles for the mosaic.
The back cover was going to be much simpler, period. No fancy designs. In fact, the only stipulation I had in mind for the back cover was that I wanted to make sure I included some of every type of tile I used on the front cover. I basically just laid them out, by tile type, glued them down and grouted them. In retrospect, I might have preferred having laid them out in a spiral-type design–start with one color and work around the edge and then slowly “spiraling” into the middle, until I’d used all the different tile types and had the back cover filled up. But, I’m still happy with the basic design on the back and it coordinates with the front cover without detracting from it, so it works.
The inside covers were another matter to deal with. I ended up with three layers for each cover–the outer layer of tiles and grout for the mosaic, a thin middle layer of plain blue (I thought it would look good backing the more translucent tiles that I was using for the sky), and an inner layer for the inside cover which had to have some kind of design element on it that followed the garden theme. I made the front inside layer a bright green and covered it with various floral and leaf canes, making different flower designs on it. The back inside cover was made from my favorite green, called Sap Green, and I simply stamped it with a background stamp of leaves. My original intention on the back inside was to antique it with dark brown but, once I’d finished grouting the covers with white grout, I realized that the back inside had to have the white highlights as well. I sanded and buffed the edges of the covers but didn’t cover or paint them with a solid cover–I felt like it was more appropriate for people to be able to see the layers.
I love making the mosaic designs, laying out the pattern, and don’t even mind the gluing part. Grouting, however, drives me nuts! I can’t stand it. I’m actually hoping I just have a particularly difficult kind of grout that I’m using and, if I change grouts, that I might enjoy the grouting part better. But I’m currently in an “I’m-never-doing-another-mosaic-as-long-as-I-live” phase so getting a different kind of grout will have to wait. I really have problems cleaning off the tiles and my cleaning always leads to messing up the grout in between the tiles, making them look rougher than I want them to. Grrrrr!
Of course, the simplest solution might be to get some help from someone who’s skilled at doing mosaics. But that would take all fun out of complaining about them, right? I really do think I’m going to have to get help with them if I do anymore, but that’s another issue I’ll deal with if I decided to do another mosaic sometime (which is likely, my current feelings notwithstanding).
Paper is another love of mine. It’s part of the reason I enjoy bookbinding so much, because I get to play with so many different types of paper. I had someone custom make a cabinet for me with the small apothecary style drawers at the top and the flat, oversized drawers at the bottom for holding large papers. I flipped through the different colors and types, mostly looking for papers with floral or plant inclusions in them. Came up with several different types of paper to use, tore it all to size, and then played around with different sequences for the various colors I was working with. There’s really no special reason for the order I put the papers in, other than I thought they looked good that way.
Before binding, I had to figure out how I wanted to do the poem and decided to put it on paper and glue it inside the front cover. My first attempt was with some of the same paper I was using as part of the text block–I had one with some larger red rose petals and I thought it would work well with the poem. I tried to write the poem out. Big mistake–I don’t write small enough and I didn’t really plan it out at all (i.e., make lines on the page or measure out where I could write) so I couldn’t fit the whole poem on the paper I’d torn. Time to rethink. I’d just gotten some fancy inkjet papers in for my Epson super-duper, high/artist quality, photo and art printer (ok, well, maybe it’s not quite THAT super duper but it is one of the higher-end printers for making art prints and high-quality photos) so I figured I’d try one of them; the 100% cotton, acid free “watercolor” paper, to be exact. Nice print, great paper. Really hard to fold, though, but tearing wasn’t too difficult so it came out with a nicely torn edge and the poem fit (because I could play with font size and shrink, as needed). Except it didn’t seem like that was enough so I played around with some floral embellishments. I tried some fabric flowers first but didn’t like how it looked so I pulled them off and glued on some of the dried petals from the first paper I tried to use (I think they had been added to the paper as more of a surface embellishment instead of being mixed into the pulp so they came out pretty easily). The final step was to cover it with some varnish for protection.
Binding is another reason I really enjoy making books. I like the process, even though it’s very repetetive (or maybe because it’s repetetive). A quick look through my threads and I easily decided on the red. I used the Coptic stitch out of necessity. I have limited experience with most exposed spine bindings and I wanted this one finished out as nicely as possible rather than being a bit more experimental, with me trying a new sewing for the first time or something. I think the Coptic works well with the overall look of the book, too.
Oh, and I forgot about the outline. I used white grout because, after thinking through my grout color options, I decided I wanted something lighter, something to make me think of purity, I guess, so I opted for white. Except that it didn’t really bring out the design very well, so I used a Bic Mark It permanent black marker and outlined the main designs on the front cover (tree, heart, and roots). Really made the design pop.
