Mini-Albums for January

Hello! Here are my trio of mini-album projects that kicked off my New Year. I have a couple of origami albums as gifts. The green one has the usual three overlapping square papers but the pink one has additional two so it's rather long to accommodate more photos. (I had to blur the photo on this one. It's my friend's underage daughter so...)

The one on the bottom is an 8"x8" modified coptic bound blank scrapbook album. I inserted beads in between signatures to give the pages more room for pictures and embellishments in terms of thickness.

The kite string still works wonders and it actually has a sort of paper-y texture. It's like a really thin paper twine to the touch. I quite like it.

October Project Updates

It's been awhile! While I resolved to post things as often as I could, I find myself writing less. Why is that? Anyway, a friend ordered 100 pieces of 2010 calendars for Christmas along with 5 notepads with hard cover that I'm going to start doing by Thursday. I'm telling you now, they're really a lot! But they're so much fun to make and early orders are always, always easy to deal with and very much appreciated.

Yesterday, I delivered a coptic-bound scrapbook album with pre-made pages to another friend. I think I really did well on that one. :) Sadly, I didn't take a picture. :( There's another one for December so I'm going to make an effort to remember to take its photo.

There's a project I've been doing for the past few months. You might think that it's really huge. Not really. It's just a 4" x 8" (plywood size) bulletin board that would go up a clinic wall. It's really a cool project. That board would hold up hundreds of photos of children who are patients of my pediatrician friend. She said, they're her pride and joy aside from her own. Cutting up the photos took a lot of time. Then there's the matter of finding a 1/2" or 3/4" thick cork board (we haven't found any!), but we ended up using the ordinary 1/4" ones. My furniture-maker did not disappoint! They're going to deliver that to the clinic on Thursday where it's going to be painted a deep, deep brown, the same color as the trims in that room. I can't believe it! I've been doing bulletin boards almost my entire life!

And I'm doing some projects to get rid of my scraps I've had since 2003. Geez! Some of those papers I ordered through eBay or some Canadian firm because nothing was available here at that time... or at least, nothing I knew of. I'll post them next time. Yes, before October ends!



My friend Chris, gave me these beautiful, hand-carved unmounted rubber stamps for my birthday! How lucky am I to be the recipient of these. She took the time out of her very, very busy schedule (being both a student and a lecturer), to make me these. Awwwww... how sweet that is. Thanks so much Chris! And DON'T go easy on the kids. :)

So, that's it for now and see you later!

For the Love of Bookbinding

Hello everyone!! It's the beginning of the -ber months and we know what it means: Christmas is just around the corner. The weather, though, isn't helping us setting the mood. No matter. In a few days time, it will be better.

Of all the papercrafting that I dabbled in, bookbinding is my most favorite. I love them all, don't get me wrong, but there's something about making books that hold so much appeal to me.

I've been doing a lot of this for quite awhile but Coptic stitch binding had eluded me for so long that when I got the chance to really sit down and learn it, it was such an accomplishment. So here are my first couple of coptic stitch-bound books. I truly enjoyed and loved the process I went through to get to these two.


I wanted to post this a long time ago but haven't gotten around to do it. It's Gerry's copy of the Elmer boxset and slipcase.

I'm planning on making a few more books for personal mini-albums that I've been planning to do for the last three years that I haven't gotten around to doing because, well, other things take priority. This time, I'm making it a priority. This house is distinctly lacking in albums! The irony of it is very glaring, I know. But I'm planning on rectifying that.