Hand-Stiched Notebook

I have been away from my blog way too long. The dark winter days have not been very inspiring for photographing, plus there haven't been much crafting going on here because i got a day job. But now i've reorganized my schedule and the sun started coming out, so i have many new things to show you.

I have finally learnt to hand-stitch notebooks! And i fell in love with it. I have been checking loads of tutorials for the past half a year or so. Finally i figured out the most clear way for me to do it and here is my first notebook.

 I was expecting the first notebook to come out quite lousy. Surprisingly it came out very nice. I used office paper of two different colors and i kept changing the color for each signature.

On the picture below you can see how the stitches look on the spine. I like the way the spine looks so much, that i've decided to use the cover only for front and back. This is also much easier than making the whole cover. This notebook now belongs to my friend Ksenia.

December Batch Out on Jozik Records

Yesterday was a really busy day. We have released a new batch of tapes on Jozik records. The day of release is always really busy and i have to spend all day in front of the computer processing images, writing blogposts and newsletters, creating PayPal buttons and so on. Lots of work. But we finally have the tapes out and we are happy :)

This time i designed the artwork for only one of the tapes. The other two were designed by our good artist friends Maiorov and Anya Kuts. Maiorov made hand made carton boxes with a beautiful drawing of his and Anya designed a lovely insert (the green one) to stick inside our new poly boxes.

I decided not to do too much hand made stuff this time, so i also designed an insert to fit into poly box for a great tape by Brian Green. I based the whole thing on a drawing inspired by my new book of Indian ornaments.

Poetry Books

I took part in a fun project this year together with two poets. We made books with their poems to sell/give away on a Christmas poetry event i mentioned in previous posts. The poets took care of all content and i've put together the books and made the covers.

The first book is by Platon Lliv. He wrote 10 of his poems by hand and added some cut outs from old books/magazines as illustrations. I've made 10 books with a minimalistic cover and scans of his writings inside.

The second book has poems by Tatiana Pertseva. She had combined her poems with loads of collages made of magazine and advertisement cut outs, own photographs, old tickets and lots of other found treasures. I've made 5 books with scans of her works. Each book has a slightly different cover made with two types of carton. The names and titles on the covers of both books were hand stamped using my alphabet stamps, letter by letter.

I really enjoyed working on this project. We already agreed on a larger project of this kind with one of the poets. Will start after the x-mas holiday. Can't wait!

New notebooks

I've been working on these notebooks for the whole week. They don't take so much time to make, but for some reason i kept doing them little by little. They are not made with recycled paper, but with new paper this time. I really wanted to try making them with this yellowish paper. And i've also finally tried my new rubber stamps on notebooks!

For this one i used an image from a magazine for the cover.

These rainbow polka dots are made of color paper and cut with a hole puncher. It took some time to glue each dot on to the cover.

For this one i used black carton and one of my black and white film photographs of flowers.

The shopping list notebook was made from the scraps left from the first three. It also took quite a long time to finish this one, because the words on the bottom were stamped letter by letter using my alphabet stamps. So the letters are not at all perfectly aligned, but i like it this way. It also has magnets on the back for hanging it on the fridge.

Wind in Willows / St. Atom HRT605 split packaging

Here is the last release that came out on Jozik this summer. For this one, the paintings were done by another artist, Helder Coelho Dias, a friend of one of the musicians. We were not acquainted with Helder's work before, so we didn't really know what to expect. But once we saw the paintings, we loved them.

There is a separate painting for each side of the box (one painting per musician), and there are matching paintings for each side of the tape itself.

All i had to do was to cut out the boxes, print out the stickers and attach them to the boxes and tapes. Well, i also had to design the inner sticker with the info, but there's nothing to design there really :)

You can check the description and sounds at Jozik records.

Banana Pill / Timothy C Holehouse split packaging

We met Tim in Lithuania when we were on our Europe tour with Banana Pill. We played two shows together.

We really liked what he does and he liked what we do so we decided to do a split tape together. And now it's finally out! We released it together with Tim's label. He took care of the tapes and we did the packaging.

I really like the "reel-to-reel" tapes Tim chose. We wanted to use this kind of tapes for a while now, but we never ended up ordering them. Now we finally have them.

I did the same carton covers for this release as for the previous one. I didn't know what kind of carton to use, so i just went to the stationary store to see what they have. Once i saw this black carton, i was sure i want to use it. It was perfect thickness, and i liked how black and shiny it was.

I came up with this painting some time ago. When it came to deciding what kind of artwork to do for this split, i thought why not use this idea. I did the painting again in "portrait" shape and added the names of our projects to it.

You can check the description and sounds at Jozik records.

Punktieren/Ous Mal / Coaxil split packaging

For all the other three releases i've decided to make carton boxes. I kept the same shape and dimensions as i had for my previous boxes, but this time instead of gluing the boxes together i've decided to keep them closed by securing them with rubber bands (i got the idea from the other tape packaging done by our friend artist).

For this release i've decided to use Mitya's sister's old painting sketches that have been lying around in our house for months. When Mitya's parents were moving, they wanted to throw them away because his sister didn't need them, they were just some paint experiments. But we liked them and thought we could use them for something. And finally they were just perfect for this tape.

I just love how every box is unique while they all are done in the same style.

We used white tapes and plain stickers with just the artist names on them. All the info was printed on the label paper, plain text on a white background. I like how the paintings on the boxes go all crazy and colorful, while all the rest of the design is really minimalistic.

You can check the description and sounds at Jozik records.

Sashash Ulz / кот кот split packaging

Four new tapes are out on Jozik records and it's time for me to share the packaging i've made for them.

For this tape i've been sewing fabric envelopes again. We found this beautiful fabric (it was actually a large skirt) at a second hand shop. The skirt was enough for exactly 49 copies, we were lucky with the size (we planned an edition of 50 copies first).

For an insert i got a new idea this time. I used textured craft paper, which i was lucky to get 50% off from Sinelli, it's really good to buy these things in summer when the sales are huge. I used label paper to print the info for the insert.

I am especially happy for the tape labels. I scanned the back side of the fabric and printed it on the labels. I think the color goes really good with white tapes. And i love how colored stickers look on matte opaque tapes.

You can check the description and sounds at Jozik records.

The most time consuming poster

This is the most time consuming poster i've ever done. It took me ages to first draw all the letters on patterned paper (keeping the patterns vary as much as possible), then cut out all the letters, then arrange them on an A4 and finally glue each one to the A4. I got so tired cutting the artist names, that i decided to just write all the other info with a marker.

The poster was for yesterday's show. The show was great, all the artists were awesome and we had our first Banana Pill collaboration with a great artist Olli Aarni.

I can't wait to post the artworks for the new tapes! I tried some new things, and they look good! But we are releasing them in a batch of four, and only three are almost ready, so it will still take a while.

New notebooks

Some time ago i have found a nice tutorial through Pinterest on how to make notebooks. I was so happy to have found it, i've never realized it could be that easy. The way i did my notebooks before was easy as well, but this is quite a different technique and the notebooks that come out are a different kind.

So the first thing i did after finding this tutorial, was trying it out on old receipts. So i made a nice shopping list notebook to hang on my fridge.

Then i tried making another notebook with some used printer paper. I used a ladybug stamp with ink of "lavender" color on every page to make the notebook prettier. I've started using the notebook already, it's so nice and small.

I really enjoyed making those. It is a very good and easy technique for the kind of notebooks where you write on the first page and rip it off afterwards to write on the next one.

But today Mitya asked me for a notebook that is small as well, but he wouldn't need to rip the pages off so they need to be holding well. So i decided to use my hole puncher and a ribbon. I've made two notebooks, the greyish one is Mitya's now. I used an image from a used magazine for the cover. For the other one i decided to add the ladybug stamp on every page as well.

When i was putting an extra notebook to the box where i keep my crafty stuff that is not used and not yet given to anyone, i've noticed a couple of notebooks i've made long time ago but haven't shared in my blog for some reason. Here they are. Made of old receipts. The covers are scans of my watercolor madness.

Origami garland

After i've got the Origami book i've been making origami from time to time, placing one as a little surprise gift in most of the packages shipped from Jozik records. One day i came up with an idea to decorate one of our doorways with origami birds hanging from the ceiling. But i didn't have much time to concentrate on making many of those birds, i made one or two from time to time, and most of them ended up in packages with Jozik releases.

Today i finally made enough birds for my garland.

Then i found some colorful felted balls i bought one day in Sinelli

I added them to my bird garland. It came out really sweet and colorful.