State of the Lab – August 18, 2011

Back to work after the summer break: I made a new How Tuesday tutorial for the Dutch Handmade blog and designed some new books for the Etsy OPEN pop-up store that will be up and running from September 7 – October 1. If you are in Leiden come and visit us, we have lots of lovingly crafted handmade products for you!

How Tuesday – Superfast Notebook

This is a tutorial for creating a notebook from a hanging file folder in just a few minutes. You have to be able to read Dutch, though…

I love to work with materials that are threatened to be thrown away or just lying around – they are often too pretty to waste. A couple of months ago I came across a huge pile of abandoned hanging file folders in bright colors. I had been staring at them for quite a while, wondering what to do with them, until I finally realized that, of course, they are perfectly suited for making books. Duh!

Here is another example of the superfast notebook, that did not make into the tutorial:

I really enjoyed making these notebooks: I think I will make some more for the Etsy OPEN store…

State of the Lab – July 7, 2011

State of the Lab – June 30, 2011

Quiet time has started at the lab (the other lab); most of the students have gone home for the summer, and ‘work’ in general is very slow. That’s good, for now I can finish some projects that have been lying around for ages – you can just see the result of one of those in the right lower corner. But what’s even more exciting, I can finally start working on some of my new ideas (not on the work bench yet…)

This is one of the long unfinished projects: three volumes of a bookbinder’s quarterly called ‘Vouwbeen’ (Bonefolder). They had been bound a long time ago and only needed a title on the cover. But since I have no machine for gilding, I had to take it elsewhere or think of an alternative way of gilding the title. Of course I had thought of stamping the title on the cover, but somehow, it never came to be. Until I saw a very nice idea in a book called ‘Print workshop’ by Christine Schmidt. I love this book! It shows a lot of ways to make print(ing)s with very simple materials. In it was an alphabet that consisted of parts of letters, which was originally meant for screen printing. I thought it would be nice to try it out with stamps, and you know what? It works! By using the multiple parts I could create shadows and make the letters playful. The numbers are also stamped with the multiple letter parts, that’s why some of them may look a bit strange…

State of the Lab – June 23, 2011

Work on the new minibooks has started in earnest: I carved a lot of new stamps, but cannot decide which ones to use. At least, not yet. It always takes a while before I have the complete picture in my head. The paths of creation are trodden carefully. Or: I do not like to experiment by just stamping random designs – it is all in the head…

State of the Lab – June 16, 2011

Back in business! Recovered from last week’s dip, I started with fresh enthusiasm today: I finished some old projects and started to work on a new Etsy item – guess what it is? You can see it on the workbench. To be continued next week…

State of the Lab – June 6, 2011

I am kind of restless lately, I have about 101 ideas for new projects but I cannot seem to decide where to start. As a result, I am now working on 4 different projects and neither of those has been finished… Help! I need deadlines!

State of the Lab – May 20, 2011

Hmmm, it seems that my weeks consist of a growing number of days; which would be extremely convenient if true… Truth is that I have not been in the lab for too many days now, sometimes you get sucked up in real life with all its nuisances. But no complaints, that’s life. The lab is open again and I am teeming with new ideas – let’s get some paper on that work bench!

I still owe you the pictures of the EtsyLab on May 9 – we had such fun! And everybody succeeded in binding 1 or more Japanese books in 1 evening, which is truly amazing, given the fact that all the bookbinding workshops I have participated in so far, lasted at least 1 entire day. It made me think about a whole new concept for workshops: “all you can bind in 1 afternoon”. Perhaps more about that later…