Jenny and I went to an Art Journaling class at The Creative Quest a couple of weeks ago and had a BLAST! It is so much fun. You put some gesso down as a base on some watercolor paper, let it dry, then attack it with acrylic paints, stencils, spray inks, oil pastels, and Sharpie pen journaling to finish. It was so relaxing and is theraputic in a way because you can make it be anything you want! No rules at all. And if you "mess up", just say "I MEANT to do that." (Like Pee Wee Herman...)
Jenny was doing some experimenting and came across a brilliant idea... Duct tape for the binding on those cereal box books! It fits the recycled theme a little bit better than good book cloth, and keeps it together just as good. I was at Staples a couple of weeks ago and came across some TIE DYE duct tape that I just couldn't resist. It's blue-purple-pinkish and I think it would look great on a Cap'n Crunch cereal book, because it reminds me of the colors of the crunch berries when they get in the milk. Yum.
My Aunt Jenny gave me a magazine subscription for my birthday - the magazine is called Cloth, Paper, Scissors. There are a lot of really good ideas in it, but in the March issue, there was an art project that was particularly interesting to me. It showed how to make books out of cardboard cereal boxes, or pretty much anything. They are just single-signature books with no actual spine, and they sort of remind me of the knapsack binding we learned in class. I made one out of a saltine cracker box, and it turned out pretty good. My sister Ann came home from school and loved it so much I let her have it. Now I am making one from the back of a Lucky Charms box that has cars on it for my brother's birthday on Sunday, and I hope to make a few more and learn how to make them quickly. Others I have in the making: a Cheerios book and a Girl Scout lemon cookie box book. I love how fast they can come together!
Since graduating from college, you know, after that wonderful bookbinding class was over and left BYU-I in the dust back in Rexburg, (don't get me wrong, I loved BYU-I, despite its quirks... I just left it quickly and was ready for something new and ready to be FINALLY done with school after going year-round for over 2 years and two semesters a year before that.) I realized that I would no longer have access to the Book Arts Lab, with its endless supplies, paper, thread, glue, text paper, and book board, not to mention the AMAZING (I didn't know how good I had it before) huge book board cutter thing which made cutting sheets of book board, no matter how huge, a cinch.
In our class, we were told about 3 really good stores who would ship from their website. Here they are:
http://www.hollanders.com/ (This one is my favorite, and probably the most expensive... but they'll have EVERYTHING you could EVER need and more. There's only two bummers... one is that you have to pay shipping and that gets expensive, and the other is that there is only one actual store, you know, on the ground... and it's in Michigan. :-( Super far away from me.)
http://www.papersource.com/ (I got to go to the actual store when I was in California... and it's a lot better in person)
http://www.papermojo.com/ (This one's ok... I could probably browse this site a little more and find more I like, but the biggest selection is at Hollanders, by far.)
These would be fine, but I just can't stand how much shipping costs, and that it takes forever to get here. So, I looked online for a similar store closer to Phoenix (even better would be IN Phoenix) and couldn't really find anything good. Then...
Suddenly...
I came upon this store called The Creative Quest. It had a good title (as opposed to others like... Arizona Book Bindery or something more vague like that) and in the description it had Bookbinding supplies and Art supplies and stuff like that. Yippee!! None of the other ones looked quite as good. (They even have a website! http://www.thecreativequest.com/. AND a blog!! http://www.thecreativequest.blogspot.com/) So, I gave the store a call and a nice lady named Kathie answered the phone and said, "Yes, we do have the bookbinding supplies you are looking for". WAHOO!! So I convinced my mom to come with me and we jumped in the car to the convenient, nearby location of Downtown Glendale. (Who could ask for anything more?) I'd never really been down there - there's lots of really old houses that have been turned into shops of all kinds. It was really cool! I'd love to go check some others out sometime. Anyway. We went into the store and... EUREEKA!! They had EXACTLY what I was looking for. Book board, PVA (glue), big cool decorative papers, other fun things to put on your books, AND they even hold classes there that teach you how to make more different kinds of books!! Oh my goodness. This is going to be so fun. I'm super excited to take a class from there - the first one I think I'm going to take is one for the Caterpillar Stitch binding. Here is a picture:
In our class, we were told about 3 really good stores who would ship from their website. Here they are:
http://www.hollanders.com/ (This one is my favorite, and probably the most expensive... but they'll have EVERYTHING you could EVER need and more. There's only two bummers... one is that you have to pay shipping and that gets expensive, and the other is that there is only one actual store, you know, on the ground... and it's in Michigan. :-( Super far away from me.)
http://www.papersource.com/ (I got to go to the actual store when I was in California... and it's a lot better in person)
http://www.papermojo.com/ (This one's ok... I could probably browse this site a little more and find more I like, but the biggest selection is at Hollanders, by far.)
These would be fine, but I just can't stand how much shipping costs, and that it takes forever to get here. So, I looked online for a similar store closer to Phoenix (even better would be IN Phoenix) and couldn't really find anything good. Then...
Suddenly...
I came upon this store called The Creative Quest. It had a good title (as opposed to others like... Arizona Book Bindery or something more vague like that) and in the description it had Bookbinding supplies and Art supplies and stuff like that. Yippee!! None of the other ones looked quite as good. (They even have a website! http://www.thecreativequest.com/. AND a blog!! http://www.thecreativequest.blogspot.com/) So, I gave the store a call and a nice lady named Kathie answered the phone and said, "Yes, we do have the bookbinding supplies you are looking for". WAHOO!! So I convinced my mom to come with me and we jumped in the car to the convenient, nearby location of Downtown Glendale. (Who could ask for anything more?) I'd never really been down there - there's lots of really old houses that have been turned into shops of all kinds. It was really cool! I'd love to go check some others out sometime. Anyway. We went into the store and... EUREEKA!! They had EXACTLY what I was looking for. Book board, PVA (glue), big cool decorative papers, other fun things to put on your books, AND they even hold classes there that teach you how to make more different kinds of books!! Oh my goodness. This is going to be so fun. I'm super excited to take a class from there - the first one I think I'm going to take is one for the Caterpillar Stitch binding. Here is a picture:
Cool, huh! The person who did this one was very creative. It is found at: http://www.yogiemp.com/Journals/HandBoundBooks/CaterpillarSpineBook.html
I will post pictures of the books I've done soon. That's all for now.
I took a Book Arts class at BYU-Idaho during the Summer of 2009, my last semester of college. I thought it was an excellent class, and I learned a lot. It is now a hobby that I plan to pursue for a long time, and I hope to get better and better at it. This blog is a place for me to post pictures of books I've made, write what new ideas worked well, and write what I learned from my mistakes.
