Awls

I'm teaching a class on coptic stitch bookbinding at Known World Heraldic and Scribes Symposium this month. Since we only have 55 minutes to completely construct a book, each student will need a full set of the tools needed, as there will be no time for sharing.

An important tool in bookbinding is an awl, for punching stitching holes in the signatures (bundles of folios). There are many kinds of awls, from scratch awls, tailors awls, punch awls, and more. For bookbinding, pretty much any will work so long as it's straight and not a tapered awl (you want your holes to be of a consistent size).

I'm not rich, and awls can get expensive quickly if you're providing a dozen or so of them. So this was my ghetto-fab fix.

I used 3" roofing nails. They're not as sharp nor tapered as smoothly as a proper awl, but they'll work. I then made little handles for them using Sugru. Sugru is an awesome mouldable glue. It acts like clay, and when it cures, it's a hardened rubber plastic. These little handles will help my students push and pull their awls through signatures.

April and May Activities

From the looks of things here, I haven't been up to much lately.  But really, I have!

In April, I was the class coordinator for the Southern Regional Collegium in the Barony of Gryphon's Lair.  It's an arts event that is always held in the south of Artemisia; a collaboration event amongst the southern groups.  So with all the scheduling and begging for teachers, I was a little crazy.  We also hosted the lovely and talented Sarah Lorraine / HE Mistress Tullia da Ferrara at my home, as she was a guest speaker for the event.  Her trip was a whirlwind - it would have been awesome to spend more time with her.

The event was fabulous though (sorry, no pics - I was too busy!)

Since then I've taken some time to wind down and I spent a day doing cute craftsy things with my mom and sisters.  In retrospect I wish I'd had some of my own paintbrushes and whatnot as I know I could have done a better job with more familiar tools, but c'est la vie.  Maybe some of you will do something amazing and share your achievements?

It's a family birthday calendar!

Drawstring Pouch

My awesome hubby has not been feeling very awesome.  In fact, he's been very sick for some time.  So when he had a bad spell Friday night, I cancelled my plans to attend Defenders Tourney in Loch Salann, and instead stayed home in case he needed me, but largely just spent time crafty/sewing.

I have a rather long task list in the land of artsy craftsy, but nothing was calling out to me, and my brain was just frazzled enough that I didn't want to start something I couldn't finish in the same day.  So enter the circular drawstring pouch.  I was sorting and organizing some of my remnants and found a sizeable piece of butter damask left over from my sottana, and decided to make a pouch out of it.  I lined it in a scrap of white linen - I swear my linen stash multiplies itself!

The drawstring is a length of double faced satin ribbon left over from my "spiral" silk sleeve tie-ons, and a couple of aiglets from the stash.

The pouch has a separate round bottom, allowing it to stand somewhat on its own, while also providing a huge amount of interior space.

See?  It's big enough to house Oinklett, my piggy shaped tailoring ham.

But not quite tall enough to hide my water bottle.  You get the picture.

I'm thinking that the next one I make will have pockets within the lining, to keep certain things separate and easy to find without having to dig through a jumble of giant pouchyness.  Like keys.  Possibly also a big pocket for my phone.

If there's interest, I might be convinced to do a tutorial on how to make these fellas.  Comment your thoughts.  As a side note, they make excellent dice bags, for those with epic amounts of dice.  (You know who you are...)

Misc. Weekend

This weekend was full of a lot of crazy randomness, with house guests and the Utah Renfest, to boot.

While the husband was entertaining guests, I snuck away and made him some more bookmarks.  This set came out much better, as I pressed the trim both before cutting and sealing the edges, and after.  I also used some Mary Ellen Best Press to set them (Caribbean Beach and Lavender Field are my faves!).

We went to the Utah Renaissance Festival and Fantasy Faire on Sunday.  I'm sad to say it was not impressive.  Alas, a huge rainstorm on Saturday left the grounds a messy mudpit, and it was the last day of the faire, so merchants were low on awesome.  It even seemed like the entertainment was weak.

I was, however, able to pick up my headband from Sable Greyhound, and while the picture doesn't even come close to showing how amazing and sparkly it is, I'll post it anyway.  I think these don't like having their pictures taken because the crystals are so reflective.  Holly, if you're reading this, I think a little video might benefit you! I got compliments all day from strangers.

And while trying to capture the headband, I discovered that my aging face is kind of oddly foreign to me.  Has this happened to any of you?  It's not like I don't see myself in the mirror every day, but it's different in a photo.  Like... I really had no idea I had that much of a dimple.  Where did that come from?

Veil + wind + humidity = crazy fuzzy hairs

Bookmarks

My husband is a scholar, and as such goes through quite a few bookmarks.  He likes to leave them in various books to reference later.  His favorite bookmarks are these woven rug bookmarks (also commonly found at Barnes and Noble and other local bookstores).

He likes the soft ones not just because they're beautiful, but they also never cause damage to the books from being too thick or having sharp edges.  He tends to go through a lot of them, however, and it can get expensive.

I got the idea in my head that I could use pieces of leftover trim that are too short to do anything with to make him some soft bookmarks.

It worked quite well.  I cut bookmark length pieces of scrap trim that I was hanging on to for some unknown reason (honestly, 18" of trim isn't enough to do much with!).  I then sealed the edges with a few drops of Dritz fray check.  This was especially important for the woven trim on top.  That one is a much more complicated weave and is a thicker trim.  Once the fray check dried, I had several nice, soft bookmarks for him, and felt accomplished to have found a use for that useless trim.

I thought I'd share this here because costumers and scribal artists tend to have a reference library, and this is much prettier than using torn pieces of paper to mark your pages; we're all about spreading the pretty!

In retrospect I should probably have pressed the trim first (they were wrapped around cardboard squares for storage), so now they like to curl a bit, but this isn't a problem when pressed inside a book, and you can learn from my mistake.  You're welcome.

Hair Clips

Yes, I am still alive.  The last few months have been a whirlwind of preparations and insanity as my beloved and I planned our wedding, and ultimately tied the knot.

Due to all this amazingly awesome chaos in my life, I haven't done anything creative in a while; something that is changing post-haste.  I have quite a few projects lined up that I'm very excited about.  I won't be spilling the beans on them just yet though.

For now, take a look at these hair clips I made for my wedding day.  They were quite easy, and the overall effect was both whimsical and elegant - contradictory in all things, as are my dear husband and I.

I started with a simple alligator clip, which I inserted a scrap of plastic or foil, depending on what was available at the time, inside the clip.  This was to keep me from gluing the clip closed.  A piece of paper would also work, though might be harder to pull away from the dried glue.  You may end up with a tiny bit of it permanently inside the clip, depending on the kind of clip you use, but it won't show.

I then cut apart some fake flowers I purchased, and removed the heavy plastic bottom receptacle/sepal combo piece, and trimmed the stem as short as possible.  I then hot glued the flowers to the alligator clip.  As the sepal and stem are what keeps fake flowers held together, I had to put tiny dabs of hot glue between the layers of the petals, to keep everything from just falling apart.  But hot glue works wonders!  (I recommend a low-temperature hot glue gun - burns are no fun.)

The Crystal branches were a bit of a strange brainchild.  I found some clear crystal drops at Michaels that were already shaped onto branches, which would have easily been glued on, but I wanted to add some ruby red Swarovski crystals into the mix.  This meant untwisting the wire branches, pulling all the clear crystals off, and slowly rebuilding it my way.  It would have been much simpler starting with fresh unused jewelers wire.

I made four clips in total - three were used in my hair, and one was clipped to the front of my red wrap dress as an accent on the sash.