Snowy Wasteland

Well, it's that time of year--Boone has pretty much turned into a snowy wasteland. Regardless of the snow and ice--the store's been open so I've not had many snow days to catch up on art or anything else, really.
The holidays kinda came and went in a blur and being at home for a week kind of made me lazy. So I'm mustering up some art motivation and gonna dive back into the books soon, I hope.
Got my first book order of the year on my Etsy shop the other day, shipping that out on Monday. I'm pretty excited about it actually. I modified the perfect binding style I usually do. Typically the covers are glued on top of the spine (the way I do it), but this time the covers got wrapped with the spine. So it's a little more streamlined. I like the look of it and think I might start making my books this way.

In other news: my computer's hard drive crashed last night. I knew it was coming, I've been saying for months that I needed to back it up but did I take my own advice? Of course not. SO now I've gotta get a new computer because I depend pretty heavily on photoshop for my books and...the internet for my facebook and etsy addictions. You know how it is, right? ;)
This time around I'll be purchasing a terabyte external hard drive right off the bat and backing up everything. I'm also going to see if I can get my photos and documents recovered from my hard drive--here's hoping.

Anyway...once I get a new computer and all I plan on working on some new book forms/ideas. I want to dabble in recipe books/boxes and see what I can come up with. That's my next venture, I think. I'll post some stuff once I get into that for sure.

News and Such

Well first off, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

My "Turkey Day" was good--good food, good time with my family--what else do you need in life, really? :)

As far as goings on in my art and craft world I've been doing some drawing lately. I really haven't drawn much since graduation (course--if we're going to be honest here--I don't really like to draw that much. and I don't consider myself to be that great at it. But it seems to be a tad more enjoyable now that I'm not doing it for a grade, so this is good.

I guess the big news is: My Etsy store is up!!! I've sold a couple of things so far and that makes me really happy. Not the money, don't get me wrong here--I'm just excited that people like what I'm making and my work is out there somewhere in the world being used and appreciated! Good stuff, that. www.themusingblog.etsy.com if you want to check it out!

Other than that I've been into cooking a lot lately. Kelsey, a friend from work, introduced me to this AWEEEESOME blog: www.budgetbytes.blogspot.com
You've gotta check it out. Affordable and delicious meals. None of them I've seen have been unhealthy at all either. I'm in love with this site and drool over it at least once a week, hah. Today I'm making a pizza from scratch using her pizza dough and sauce recipe. Smells amazing--can't wait to eat it later tonight :) I've made pumpkin soup, bagels and the spinich artichoke pasta. All of it amazing. None of it broke the bank. So yeah, check that out.

I'll post some pictures of my recent drawings soon.

In the spirit of Halloween

Oddly enough I haven't really been that excited about Halloween this year (other than the paranormal investigation show marathons plauging television this month). But yesterday at work there was a lot of talk about the employee pumpkin carving contest they were having and I (with the help of my coworker Billy) came up with an idea for a pumpkin I just couldn't pass up. This pumpkin was probably the most intricate pumpkin I've ever tackled. It might not look like it was...but...it was. I'm sure due to the fact that I had mostly small lines and had to use an exacto (due to the printmaker's perfectionism that I suffer from).
So my pumpkin?
Edward Cullen (yes, surprisingly I hadn't thought of carving Edward's likeness into a pumpkin before). I got a ghost pumpkin (you know, the pale/white ones) and yes, even painted it so it sparkles when the light's on it. I thought it was pretty funny. And just in case you're wondering---I actually happen to be a Jacob fan--so no, i'm not (completely) obsessed.;)
The last one should be captioned "The closest I'll ever get to Robert Pattinson", hah.

And of course after the pumpkin carving--i had a bunch of pumpkin left over...so I COOKED with it. First time ever using actual pumpkin in food. Realatively easy. Made a BOSS pumpkin soup and some pumpkin cream cheese spread. Got the recipes here: www.budgetbytes.blogspot.com--check it out. That blog has awesome recipes and on the cheap too. If you decide to make the pumpkin soup-- my tips would be ease up on the cayenne and add some brown sugar. :)

Little bitty update

Darkroom progress: The shed was a bust. Got it all cleaned out and the space is there but...the floor is in worse shape than i thought and not knowing how long I'm going to be living there I just don't want to put the money into insulating that puppy properly. It would take way more fixing up than I'm willing to do at this point and I kind of need that money for supplies....and bills.
Solution? I'm going to try setting up a part of the studio for the enlarger and getting some extra heavy fabric to black out the windows and cover the open doorway that leads into the hall whenever i need to expose photos. Might be a little ghetto but...you know--artist on a budget, here. I think it'll work fine in the end.

Books: Been working a lot on books. I've got ten in the making (about half way done) right now and five at a store in Boone (Anna Banana's)!!! So that's pretty exciting to have some of my books in a store. Getting ready to send half of these ten over to Brianne Greene who has graciously offered to try and sell them at a local craft fair in Okinawa, Japan (along with her own fabulous handmade items) in the next month or two! Really excited to have some in another country, the idea of that is just...super cool to me, hah! And then the other half I'm gonna post on etsy. That's kind of a leap of faith for me--I've really been procrastinating getting the shop set up but I think it's about time. Just gotta dive in there and get started.

That's really about all I've been into lately; just trying to figure out a way to get this enlarger/darkroom thing set up and get going with my new idea for a photo series and really get going with these books. I feel like I'm picking up the tricks of the trade and getting faster at making them. I'm really enjoying coming up with new ideas about bookmaking and learning more about the craft as I go along. I've had the restless bug this week, however and haven't been at home too much to get stuff done. But I guess that's okay. :)

Handbound Calendar

So this is the calendar/day planner I made for Pam. Designed/laid out/printed and bound by your truly ;)

Complete with accordion pocket in the front to keep important stuff in and lined paper in the back for notes. Definitely happy with how it turned out!

Photography Find!

So today...was kind of awesome.I went into town to return some books to the library and rent one of the Harry Potter movies and came back with a whole darkroom set up. I swung by Ram's Rack thrift store, remembering that Michael had said there was a photo enlarger there. And sure enough--there it was. $40. I checked it out and even though it's pretty old school-- everything looked really well taken care of so I got it. When I drove my car around the guy asked me if I had seen the box of darkroom stuff and I said no and checked it out. Everything needed to set up a good dark room was in it--safe light, extra film holders, contact printer for film proofs, measuring cylinders/cups for chemicals, film developing tanks, timer, a bunch of filters for camera lenses, loops, etc. Pretty sweet. So yeah! Now i have no excuse to set up a print space in the storage building. I took the first step today and converted the old playhouse/doghouse thing that the owners (i'm guessing) left into a little storage place for the bikes so we can have more space out in the building. Next steps are to just clean everything we don't need out of the shed, get all the dirt and dust out, get Michael's dad up here to take a look at things (already existing wiring/getting some insulation in there/see if we can rig up something for washing prints). I also want to set up an exposure unit for screen printing and printing station out there...maybe a baby printing press in the near future? who knows what else. Hopefully this all works out. But I figure if a darkroom landed in my lap--maybe some other good stuff will as well, right?

BOOKS!

Finally getting around to posting pictures of the books I've made recently. I have photos of one more that was commissioned but I don't want to post it until I know she's gotten it--no spoilers! :)

Somebody asked me today how I got started with bookmaking-- I learned it in school as part of my printmaking courses. It also came into play while I was still a graphic design major but...I didn't like it nearly as much then. Hand-making books is WAY more awesome than just designing them (personally, hah. No bad vibes towards graphic designers--it's just not my thing). At any rate, I definitely love making books and as a recent art school graduate, bookbinding is one of the more accessible skills I learned in school as I don't exactly have the funds for a good digital SLR, photo enlarger, darkroom, or printing press at the moment--alas.

But I digress. Books are what I promised: so books you shall have!
This is a "perfect case binding", my favorite style of bookbinding. This particular one has blank pages for journaling and/or sketching:
This one is a lined journal bound using "coptic stitch". The sweet thing about this style is that they open flat and the stitch makes a nice pattern along the spine (the cover of this one is the first picture I posted, in case you were curious):

I guess my favorite thing about making books is that they're functional. I like the idea of something being nice looking but something someone can use as well.

So that's my shpeel. Next time: I'll post pictures of the calendar I made for Pam and whatever else I happen to be working on.