The Craft FantasticBeautiful cover, beautiful title, beautiful insides!
It’s a 21st Century Bestiary. “Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the earth, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizarreness of the many living forms we thought we knew and some we could never have contemplated, and invites us to better imagine the world around us.”
You can take a sneeky peek at the introduction on Amazon – you won’t regret it.
Pink strawberry flavour cupcakes, cream cheese frosting and good old sprinkles.
I just googled, looked at various tutorials, then played around with an old magazine – the chunkiest I could find!
Found the middle then worked my way out, alternating the types of folds evenly.
Ex Libris: Latin, meaning “from the books of”.
For a while I’ve been aware of bookplates, but never really thought about what they are and what they mean. I’ve seen them for sale on The Literary Gift Company and felt like I needed some.
Then the good old British Museum shared a link on Facebook for this book:
…and it made me investigate more.
Good ol’ Wikipedia says:
“Bookplates typically bear a name, motto, device, coat-of-arms, crest, badge, or any motif that relates to the owner of the book, or is requested by him from the artist or designer.”
Basically, they go in the front of all your books to say “these are MINE!” but in a nicer, more artistic and often very beautiful way.
Did you know there’s a Bookplate Society? You do now. This website makes me realise just how little I know about this topic- therefore, I hereby add ‘Bookplates’ to the ever-growing list of Stuff I Will Read Up On One Day But Don’t Have Time Right Now.
In the meantime, I find myself wanting to make a Craft Fantastic Bookplate, either with the little boat or the mermaid logo. While I’m designing that in my head, check out these absolutely gorgeous examples:
Simple to make and tasty. Kind of like making truffles; coat the moulds, make the filling (in this case, coffee mixed with sugar and heated, then poured over chopped choc and mixed till smooth) then pour into the set cases. When the filling is set and the top coat put on, smoosh a walnut half on.
Recipe taken from Miss Hope’s Chocolate Box.
So I made up a new blank notebook. Ivory paper:
Red and gold headband:
Simple black cover:
The intention was to stick a decorative metal key on the front, but I can’t quite decide how to place it. Which looks best?
I am both glad and sad that Shepherds Falkiners has moved. Sad because I can no longer browse their lovely store in my lunch hour, or wander down to buy more book binding supplies. Glad because it stops me buying yet more paper.
I am resigned to online window shopping and trying to think up an excuse to buy some of the following:
Oh. But I actually think I do need some of this French waxed paper for covering my notebooks:
Why? Erm, well, I just do…
Recent charity shop purchase:
And inside…
No idea what this book is, literally just saw the old cover and the fact it was 95p and bought it!
Two origami bunny tutorials:
The yellow one is inflatable, so when you get to the second to last step, you need to… blow into the bunny’s nose!
Coptic binding is something I’ve been wanting to try for ages and I found a really great tutorial. I love this one particularly as the pictures are so clear.
To practise this technique, I decided to bind my old sketches together. They’ve been laying around, sheets of A4 from sketch pads that have fallen to bits… I don’t really know why I keep them but I do! Binding them all together meant I could keep them all tidy in one place and also have a go at coptic binding. Winner.
I love the spine!
One of the advantages of this type of binding is that allows the pages to lay nice and flat:
🙂