Hand Stitched Books

Since we’ve had the dog at home, Jess the basement cat has become a bit of a recluse mostly favouring the upstairs bedrooms to the basement studio. I thought I might have to change her name to bedroom kitty but then this week she decided to help me like she used to by sitting on my table with her bottom firmly sat on something sharp and pokey.  I’ve missed the fluffball and her questioning stare on my work table.

I imagine she was curious to know what I was doing especially with that cotton thread sitting there.

I was making these four travelers notebook sized mini scrapbooks using kraft file folders as my covers. I love the look of the kraft and patterned papers together, the brown card shows off the little embellishments beautifully. The tape down the spine is to add a bit of extra strength as I sewed through the layers.

Also last week I finished my latest sketchbook. I went back to a coptic stitch binding leaving it on show which isn’t always the best idea unless you’re  super accurate and neat. Just don’t look too closely at the wonky stitches. The spine of the book was in such bad condition I had to discard it anyway so cutting the book apart didn’t make me wince. I see it as rescue anyway not vandalism.

I found the book in the recycling centre and fell in love with the cover. Of course I’ve kept and am using the inside pages too but the cover was crying out to be repurposed into a new book.

I think there might be a recycling trip tomorrow on the hunt for more treasure. See you on Friday and have a good week.

Jaine x

Friday In The Studio – Getting Ready For December

Who documents December in a special journal? This random pile is a few of my journals from past years including an altered book, fabric, faux dori and a mini file folder for Instagram photos, I’ve tried them all.

dec-daily-stack

This year I’ve decided to go once again with an altered book but this time I’ve taken the pages out and used only the cover.

dd16

I thought I’d go with an elastic style binding to hold the pages in which will enable me to reuse the cover next year.

dd16inside

I used watercolour paper for the inside pages as I can paint, glue and do almost anything I feel like to them without them falling apart and just as a bit of an experiment I decided to tea dye the paper for a bit of a vintage feel.

Oh boy I had no idea that it would make me so happy once the pages were dry. To be honest, I really should have done it before I sewed the pages together as it was a bit of an afterthought but I was so happy with the colour, the staining and even how the pages curled and buckled once they’d dried. I was positively squealing with delight.

tea-dyed-pages

I’ve three books or signatures of five papers each sewn together on the sewing machine and these fit through the elastics in the cover.

tea-dyed-pages-inside

The cover has been decorated with firstly some Collage tissue paper from Canvas Corp along with some lace, tags, stickers and a few sequins.

dd16

I am more than happy with it and can’t wait to dive in.

I’d love to know if you’re going to document December in any way? Let me know.

Have a good weekend.

Jaine x

Workshops Around And About

A couple of weeks ago I gave a workshop to the ladies of the Mosaik group. It was the first one of the year and so nice to see these ladies again.

I thought I’d try and push them out of the size they’re normally used to creating with and have a go at a full sized layout along with some small pre-made embellishments to use with their card making and mini page layouts.

As usual we started with a kit which they loved and I got them sewing through paper and layering elements together as well as adding some touches of gold accents here and there.

workshop march 16

The next time we meet will be in May which I’m already planning.

The other workshop was with a group of local ladies who wanted to learn the art of book folding. They’d seen the tree Lena and I had taught Mosaik before Christmas and wanted to do a similar thing. As it’s Spring I showed them a birdhouse complete with little bird and a bit of foliage.

birdhouse

Happy Friday

Jaine x