Making Stuff

Once again, I've fallen behind in posting anything here.  Rest assured, if I'm not posting something, I'm involved in creating wonderful things.  Or maybe I'm working on a top secret government research project.  Or maybe I'm napping...

One thing I've been pretty much obsessed with lately is making journal/notebook/datebook things.

I had looked from time to time at Midori Traveler's Notebooks.  They fascinate me, with all the inserts available and different versions and sizes.  It's a whole culture out there, and I had no idea just how big the TN culture was.

Meantime, I kept seeing Teesha Moore making her own version of these books, using her journal art on the covers, and selling them in her etsy shop.  Since they usually sell out before I can get one, when she made a new batch, I jumped on it.  I bought one in a medium size, similar to the passport size.  When it came, I carried it around from room to room.  I kept it on my desk while I worked so I could look at it and pick it up to feel the leather.  I ordered another.  Actually, I ordered two more, in the micro size, and gave one as a gift.

If you are a subscriber to Teesha and Tracey Moore's Artstronauts Club, you know how generous she is in sharing her art process, her journals and how she goes about filling pages with her art. I wasn't sure how she was putting art on these leather covers.  I researched online trying to find a company that printed on leather.  Then, when I was catching up on watching some of her videos, there it was.  She mentioned she had posted a video a while back showing how she did this.  What? It was right there under my nose the whole time.

This called for a play day at my friend Gaye's.  We played with transferring Gaye's background art onto leather.  There's a learning curve, but we were very happy with the result.

Over the next few days after I got home, I made another one, using pages from a 2015 art journal for my cover art.  Since I had copied the pages from a journal, they were second generation, so when I made my collage, I used colored pencil and markers to add more depth and color to the page.  I used a thinner leather, mainly because I had more of it, plus I'm not close enough to Gaye to go over and use her heavy duty sewing machine to sew through the thicker leather.

Once again, I was very happy with it.  I have ordered a few inserts from Amazon to go in the books, but mostly I have made my own inserts.  One I made is an address book.

I cut a piece of ledger paper the size of the pages I needed.  I typed and drew on the page and made a copy.  I put both copies on a piece of copy paper, with the center of the page marked.  Since I put it dead center, I could copy on the back side and get front and back.  Then cut to size and put in the book.

I'm finding all kinds of uses for these books.  It's still a learning curve, but it's been a fun journey!