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.

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!

Banana Pill Tour CD-R

This week is the last week before we go on tour and it has been a bit crazy as usually. I stayed up really late making covers and t-shirts. Today i can finally slow down a bit. I still have some things to do, but at least the biggest things are ready and i don't have to go to school today.

Two big things basically were t-shirts and a new Banana Pill live CD-R we've made especially for the tour. Now that the t-shirts are drying after a successful wash (the images have not disappeared!) and the CD's are packed i can finally show you the result of my work.

The idea of this CD-R was that we make it fast and cheap, so that anyone could buy it and we could give it as a gift to someone if we want to. We included only live tracks there, so that people who hear us and like it can buy it and listen to something similar to what they've heard.

So i went with this very simple design. I've ripped apart one simple white CD sleeve, traced it over this nice carton, cut it out and glued together. Then i've stamped the text on the front of each sleeve with my alphabet stamps. Stamping letter by letter doesn't give you perfectly straight text, but i like it because this way each sleeve is unique.

I've stamped the CD-R's the same way. I just needed to remove extra ink with a tissue, otherwise it wouldn't dry so well. I used inkjet-printable CD-R's.

Even though i didn't expect this CD-R to look any special, i am really happy with a result. Very minimalist and stylish. Cheap and easy, but it sure takes some time.

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.

Stamps

Several days ago i've received a parcel with some new stamps. I finally decided to try and order something from Etsy. I really like rubber stamping, but stamps are quite expensive in local craft shops and i don't even like most of the designs. So when i found Blossom Stamps shop on Etsy, i ordered some stamps straight away.

First, i just wanted to review my new stamps, but then i thought why don't i share my whole little stamp collection.

This is my first rubber stamp. I just wanted to try rubber stamping, so i wanted to buy a small and cheap stamp. This ladybug was really cute so i got it. You've probably seen it used on my notebooks.

These are handmade Indian wooden stamps i found in a local craft shop. I really liked the designs and it took me a long time to pick these two. They are really pretty but it's not so easy to get a nice looking image with them, because the material is hard, unlike rubber or polymer.

I've been looking for alphabet stamps for a really long time. I was really happy to finally find them in a local craft shop. I have used them for some gift packaging, but initially i wanted to get these to use them on tape covers for our Jozik releases. Hopefully i can try that soon. But they are definitely good for many other purposes.

And finally, the stamps i received from the Blossom Stamps Etsy shop. When i first found the shop i just wanted to get almost all of their stamps, i really liked the designs. But then i decided to choose the ones i like the most, try them out and if i like them get more later. Their stamps are handmade using photopolymer, so i wasn't sure if they are as good as rubber. But when i tried them out i definitely wasn't disappointed.

I really like the amount of detail these stamps have. I've been wanting a bicycle stamp and some birds so i'm really happy they had those in the shop. I am definitely going to order more from them. They do custom stamps as well, so i'm thinking of a Jozik stamp maybe.

This post was not sponsored by anyone. I did not get any money to review the items featured in this post.