Whipstitch

So I've been working hard this week on my super thick book that I've been sewing and I just wanted to post a couple of pictures. I finally bought new needles (since I kept breaking all the other ones I had after only one signature) and the first one lasted quite a while before breaking. Part of the problem is that some of the holes are too small but since I've already started, I don't want to go back with the Dremel and try to enlarge them. Needles are cheaper and quicker. I'm sewing 16 pages per signature so with about 600+ pages total, it's taking a while. But last night I discovered I'm over halfway through, as my thumb callus can attest (I don't like thimbles). It looks nice though. As I move along I'll need to decide what color I want the case to be. I'm think a pretty light blue. It's too bad that I can't sew endbands on since the pages are all individual (at least I don't think I can--I'll have to double check). I'm also hoping to start on my brother's holiday gift soon but I have to start brainstorming what types of materials I want to use. I have a copy of our family crest and he was wanted a copy of for a couple years now (I kept forgetting to give it to him). So this year (well, really last year but I didn't have time to do it last year) I plan on making him some type of artwork that incorporates it backed by a canvas. I'm thinking of printing on a variety of materials but I'm not sure yet what I want to experiment with. I guess I'll just have to make another trip to Joanns and browse for inspiration. Lucky me!

Oh the holidays...

Well, while I work on trying to improve the look of the blog (see previous post), I will continue to write because really, can I ever not share my thoughts on whatever pops into my head? I wish my laptop was alot nicer because there would probably be quite a few more postings if I could post whenever something was in my head. I guess that's what my Twitter and FB are for! (You poor suckers that follow me on there)

As usual, I have a bunch of projects I'm still chugging away on. They'll get done sometime this month but now that it's December and Thanksgiving has passed, it's time to break out the holiday decorations. I will rush to put up these decorations as soon as possible after Thanksgiving, not because I can't wait to celebrate our weird Hanukkah/Christmas mix but because, darnit if I'm going to put in a lot of effort hanging lights and garland and putting the fall decorations away while dragging winter decorations out of the basement, I want to enjoy them for as long as possible! I refuse to put them up before Thanksgiving and I will not keep them up through January. Well, maybe just the snowmen stuff. And so, this week I will spend almost every night frustratingly swearing on my front porch (PG-rated swearing, since I have neighbor kids). The weather was absolutely lovely on Sunday, I didn't even have a coat on, so I started the lights then. I checked the strands to make sure they worked and after hanging lights for an hour or so (making great progress I thought), I ran out of staples. But I figured I'd plug in what I had completed, take a look at it. Several sections would not light up. So I gave up for the night, knowing I had a lot of time ahead of me just to fix the ones I already hung. Last night, I return to the little glittery bastards, ready to remove bulbs and plug in new ones in an assembly line type fashion only to discover that some of my strands miraculously relit themselves. Not that I wasn't happy, but what the hell?! And of course it was much colder so by the time I finished hanging a few more strands, I had had it for the evening. Tonight will be take 3 (at least for the front porch). Needless to say, I probably won't complete much on my other projects.

Speaking of my other art stuff, I am thinking of entering my first craft festival next year since Irwin has so many festivals and does not charge for you to be a vendor. However, that means there will be a lot of work for me to accomplish over winter if I want to have enough merchandise available. Otherwise, my display will look pretty pathetic. Sometime soon I will need to sit down and plan it out to see if I can accomplish it at all. As for bookbinding, that will be somewhat difficult since I usually do custom jobs. I have some new wire-working tools for jewelry that I am really excited about. I probably won't get to use it until mid-December once all the holiday gifts are bought and wrapped and decorations up.

Decorations are tricky (see how my mind bounces around?). Hubby and I are both Jewish but 75% of our family is not and so we tend to just celebrate both with different sets of families depending on the day. My family is not Jewish (I converted 4 years ago) and so I was raised on tales of Santa and twinkling Christmas trees (not in a religious way, however). When hubby and I started our own decorations, I tended to only get things that are winter themed. Snowmen, snow flakes, animals, etc. I didn't want to overdo it so that our house looked like David puked his star everywhere, but I definitely wanted to avoid anything Christmasy. Well, that didn't last long. We broke down and bought a "holiday" tree. All of the decorations are cool colors like silver, blue, purple, gold and themed around animals and winter. I am very strict on the No Santa rule. But it recently occurred to us while chatting with another relative that we may have to rethink ALL of our rules. When we eventually have children, we do plan on having them attend Jewish services, go to Hebrew school, etc. BUT we don't want to raise them strictly Jewish. We plan on teaching them about all sorts of religions so that as they get older, they can choose whatever they want, if any. Now, that complicates things because if we celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, I can't really avoid Santa. He's pretty essential actually, if you are a young child. I'm already feeling confused so I can't imagine how a 3 yr old would feel. I'm still not going to buy a giant inflatable Santa for the front yard though.

Revamping my blog design

I'm a little frustrated by this blog, I have to say. Not because I can't think of things to write, or have too much I want to write. I'm actually in the mood to play around with the design of things and there is some rearranging I'd like to do. The site itself needs to just pop a little more and to be a little bit more personalized. But I haven't worked with HTML in a couple of years and I'm eager to learn how to program in other languages as well. So it's frustrating because there are many things I'd like to do but I don't know how to do them yet! I also have this widget that I noticed on another blog (www.savvygrouse.com) but I am having trouble working it into the layout I am given by blogspot. I can only play around so much with the HTML. Right now, if you scroll allllll the way down to the bottom of the page, it's on the left-hand side. It's a neat little Flickr cloud widget and they spin when you hold your mouse over it. I love this little widget but oh, is it frustrating! I just can't get it to go where I want.

I have a lot of ideas for background textures and some really neat layouts that I'd like to try. I was originally going to set up my own website and play with all of this as I learned more programming, but I got impatient and started this blog up. I think I will still try to do that, but I will have to point to my blog. I'm just not sure how much customization is really permitted on blogspot. Hopefully, you all will have something else to look forward to (besides photos of my artwork and book press) as I learn more.

In other news, I've had some really great ideas for objects I'd like to construct and have posted on Etsy. Right now, I only have a few earrings on there which is not a very good representation of all that I do. But I'm already committed to making some gifts this year (instead of purchasing everything) so I'm not sure when I will have the time! I've been working on hanging wallpaper at home as well and it just looks amazing! I know most people hate it and granted, I've never had to strip wallpaper, but I just love the look of it. There is just some much more that you can do with it instead of paint. I'm not really a fan of any of the textured paint techniques. Or perhaps I've only ever seen poor examples of it. But we've been putting up little bits of textured wallpaper here and there in our house and are so pleased with the results. At some point I will post pictures. I also have a few photographic ideas in mind for the walls that we are finishing up. I have lots of family photographs that need to be hung somewhere and I have some great ideas for printing on some atypical materials, maybe staining them, and then framing them. Again, I wish I had more time!

Thanksgiving is coming up soon obviously (have you been following my Thanksgiving quotes of the day on Twitter?) and I've started my baking frenzy. One pie down and four (or five) to go still. Half will be my standard pumpkin pie made from scratch (not canned) and the other half will be a new recipe I tried last year for apple pumpkin pie. It was amazingly delicious and from my Healthy Cooking magazine. Mmm, pumpkin. This year I am pretty thankful for my life in general. What are you all thankful for?

Deviating From The Traditional Script

Hm, so I was hoping to have pictures (coming soon!) but hubby has decided to make me my very own book press! As soon as he finishes it, I will post some. I'm very excited to have something that works just as well as the presses at work in the lab but that is much cheaper than buying one. It will even have the little hand cranks. Yay!

I've been VERY busy at work with all of my students, so it's been almost a month since my last update. I've been working on a few other projects, which you will hear more on soon. I have continued progressing on the hymnal project for my aunt and I've begun guarding the signatures. I am waiting for a couple of pages that are missing but I might have to look for another copy of the book in a library to photocopy the missing ones. They must've been the most popular songs, worn out from overuse and easily fell out. So far all four copies that I have are missing the same pages. Go figure!

I also started working on a book for a friend (a very large book) that is taking me quite a while to sew. I'm doing my first whipstitich (or oversewing) and I've already snapped one bookbinding needle. It looks pretty neat so far because I chose a black waxed linen thread on white paper, very stark. I'll also have to post pictures of that. I had a grand old time in the Artist and Craftsman store in Squirrel Hill buying supplies. Plus lots of stuff I didn't really need but wanted, like paper. No wait, I always need more art supplies! That's my justification. How can I make more art without it? I was in heaven, to say the least. I was also looking at the blocks for linocuts (I think they are called). I'd like to dabble in those later but since I don't know anyone who does that (or at least I don't think I do), I'll have to find a great instruction book. They might be great for putting images on my books, canvases, etc. I also came across the Yudu machine and it looks amazing! There were some negative reviews of it, plus it's not cheap, but it's still something I would love to have.

Thanksgiving is fast approaching and now that I have all the Halloween decorations down (leaving the fall-themed ones up), I have to start thinking about baking. I make pumpkin pies from scratch (yes, that's right, no canned pumpkin) and I start taking orders early so I know how many I'm going to have to bake. I don't charge because they're just for friends and family, but I make enough for whomever wants one. Last year I also tried a recipe for an apple pumpkin pie and it turned out amazing! I think I will have to make that one again, maybe take that to our Thanksgiving dinner instead of the traditional one. I'm also in the mood to explore some other pumpkin recipes since I might have some of the puree left when I'm done with the pies.

I've been in a very good mood lately, perhaps I'm just getting enough sleep. But I had one of those moments while I was driving by myself and thought, I'm happy with my life right now. I have a great family, friends; I enjoy my job; I'm healthy; what more could I want? And I think I must watch too much television because I immediately looked around for the car that was going to T-Bone me abruptly since that's what always happens when the character realizes they are truly happy while driving. Luckily, I'm still here!

Preservation Work

I will be embarking soon on a new project for my aunt and her church and so I'm of a mood to post pictures. My bookbinding skills will be needed for this one! They discovered in the church belfry an old collection of hymnals, most of which are filthy, damaged, and incomplete. They chose a few of the best copies and I am going to clean, repair, and piece together one whole bound copy in its entirety. I have a few "Before" photos just to show the condition they are in.



I know this layout is a little icky (I seem to have trouble getting things to look nice unless I want to invest the time in messing with the html), but you can see the front cover (the best one), some of the middle section, and below there are photos of the back cover and of the few others in worse condition.

On the subject of bookbinding, while I was putting together a PowerPoint for a class I'm guest lecturing, I found some photos I took over a year ago of a leather-bound book. I repaired it in the lab, which is a treatment we only do rarely. Using a wheat starch paste that we cooked in lab, I was able to reattach the boards with muslin strips. I simulated cords by separating the ends of the strips and attaching one side underneath the board (and under the marbled endsheets) and the other side on top of the board (under the layer of leather). A later photo shows the hollow core I adhered to the spine (again using wheat starch paste). The core is made of japanese tissue paper and is glued in stages, keeping it open inside using a strip of mylar. The mylar was removed once the core was dry. The third photo shows the dark brown italian canapetta that I used for the spine, while the fourth shows the original leather spine readhered. It was still mostly intact and I wanted to preserve it.

Inspiration

It's really too bad that practically no one reads this blog. I wouldn't say I'm in a creative slump per se, it's more that I see so many options and so many types of media to work with that my brain feels overwhelmed and I don't end up working on anything. It would be nice to get some advice on how to inspire creativity, but in a strict sense. I love art classes for this very reason. Because of the parameters that are put on assignments, it allows me to be even more creative because I can focus. When the sky is my limit, well, that's just too broad and uninteresting for me. Anyone out there know of good books or websites that could help with this? Too bad I'm not an art teacher, I could assign myself some projects.

Night Owl Designs, up and running

My three collections are complete as of last weekend. I took some photos (although not the best in the way of photographic environment) and although they could be better, you can see enough. The thumbnails are at the bottom of my blog page but also available on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightowldesigns/). I'm the least satisfied with how the book collection turned out, but mostly because of color choices on the journal I think. The jewelry collection included two sets with a necklace and earrings in each, as well as a basic box for them that I decorated with paper. The scarf also goes in this set and it's titled "Handmade Accessories." The book collection included a large sketchbook, the 200+ page journal (with endbands), and two "Forget-Me-Not" notebooks (you can see how small they are in the photo where use my hand as comparison). Finally, the canvas collection is three pieces that follow the theme "Live, Laugh, Love." They were covered in paper of varying weights, decoupaged, and other decorations were added afterwards (such as sewn seams, buttons, ribbons, etc). I also have a few photos of a bracelet made of glass beads and wrapped in wire. This one was made while watching TV a couple nights ago and I'm posting it on Etsy. Let me know what you think. I welcome criticism or other ideas.