I love paper. I have always loved paper. I bought a Bind-It-All machine a few years ago which meant that several sheets of paper & a couple of sheets of decorated card could easily be made into a nice wee notebook. Soon I was looking for anything flat which was thin enough to fit into the machine. It can punch through not only card, but also thick felt & plastic like Cds & floppy disks.  After doing several  bookbinding classes at Edinburgh Contemporary Crafts I discovered the joy of hand-bound books. Inspired by Kathy Fritz in Cloth Paper Scissors, PAGES vol 5 who challenged herself to make one hand-made book every week for 1 year, I have decided to set myself this challenge.

Ideally I would like to start this on 1st January, but I can’t wait till then & I want to start NOW. For my 1st week I’m possibly cheating slightly by saying in true ‘Blue Peter’ style –  ‘here’s one I made earlier’. I still love my floppy disk notebooks & am always on the lookout for them in charity shops. Recently I came across a real gem – a box of rare coloured disks languishing at the back of a shelf. Unfortunately coloured floppies were not big in the UK, so not easy to find.

One thing that interests me at craft fairs (apart from seeing all the lovely goodies made by fellow crafters) is seeing the original way they display their goods for sale. Some of the best displays are those using up-cycled items that were never intended to be used for that purpose, but that work very well.

I came across this bathroom shelf in a charity shop. It was intended to be wall-mounted with hooks at the bottom for hanging things on. It was standing perfectly on these ‘hooks’, which made perfect feet for it to stand on. It looked like it would make a perfect two tier stand to display my floppy disk notebooks……

…..and it was.

I hate to throw anything away, including small scraps of paper. I keep them sorted in drawers according to colour. Often I find two completely unrelated bits of paper side by side that go together perfectly. This then makes me hunt for more to see if I have enough for a patchwork card. Cutting squares from these scraps & making patchwork backgrounds for cards is a great way to use them up. I could spend hours sifting through the colours finding those which go together. I know I have posted about these retro social media cards before but the randomness of the patchwork backgrounds makes each one truly unique.

This is a 6″ square  ‘pop art style’ canvas that I made for the Cloth Paper Scissors  Day of the Dead competition.  The squares are painted with Tim Holtz distress paints. The skulls are my own ‘Funky Bones’ designs which have been cut from card which has been covered with torn book pages (from Grey’s Anatomy). I normally just use thick white handmade paper or white felt for the skulls, but using the torn book pages adds to the randomness already created by the mismatched button eyes & hand-sewn mouths.

After completing my latest bookbinding course at Edinburgh Contemporary Crafts I felt able to attempt the ‘holy grail’ of bookbinding – Coptic Stitch by myself. I wanted to make a unique & meaningful Christmas present for my partner. He is a big fan of Mint Sauce – the mountain-biking sheep from MBUK magazine. Sadly Mint is no longer in the magazine, but he has a huge stash of Mint cartoons from old magazines. I picked 2 suitable ones for the front & back covers (having first scanned them & replaced the scanned copies back in his stash).

I covered boards with the cartoons & edged one side & the corners with buckram. I set alternate blue & green eyelets along the buckram edge. I lined each signature with alternate blue or green paper for contrast. Sewing on the final signature & cover is still a bit tricky. It is slightly easier to sew the final signature & then the cover separately but this means a double row of sewing on the last signature, which can look messy, but then again so can a single row if it is not sewn on straight.

Front view

Open view of signatures

Spine

Spine detail

back cover

This necklace was made by finger knitting with waxed cotton cord & randomly threading on recycled plastic shapes through an eyelet hole in the middle of each shape.  Finger knitting can be tight & neat or, as in this case, loose & with a random ‘netty’ appearance. The plastic came from my growing stash of brightly-coloured plastic bottles.

It isn’t finished yet as I haven’t yet decided on the closure, but I am pleased with the combination of colours. It would also look good using  different shades of the same colour of plastic, or all black plastic & coloured eyelets.

There is no need to add a sentiment. This lovely background paper, with the word ‘mother’ in different languages, says it all. A big. bold flower in co-ordinating colours is all that was needed.

Cassette tapes are no good for playing anymore, but they do come with 4 conveniently-placed holes which allows them to be bound into a book. The most time-consuming part of this was the cutting of the paper for the signatures as, inconveniently, cassette tapes are not a size that is a proportion of a standard sheet of paper.

Coptic-bound cassette book

Coptic-bound cassette book

Coptic binding

This is my first lego notebook. I used a 16 x 16 pin square & spiral bound it using my Bind-it-All. I think for my next one I will use more spirals as it seemed a bit loose. I only used lego for the front cover &  covered grey board for the back. It would also look good coptic-bound. Maybe for my next project.

Being a cat-lover I jump at the opportunity to include them in my work. I love this slinky black cat. Without the Santa hat it can be adapted for many different occasions.