Books! (or some of the books I made recently)

So, I didn’t post from July 1st until December.  Life was so very busy last year – especially after April, when the Building Project really got going. 

That doesn’t mean I didn’t make any books for my business though.  I had a number of commissions – mainly for wedding books – and made several other books too.  In September I taught a one-day workshop at the local quilting shop.  We made felt-covered journals, with embroidered covers. The ladies did some lovely work. 

I had quite a busy bookbinding year, in fact:

These are some of the books I made over the year…
 

In the last couple of months, I’ve made mostly notebooks and journals.  Many have had covers of wool felt, or of leather.

Wool Felt Journals

 

 

 

 

 

Forest Bird Journal. 

 

 

 

 

Mauve Wool Felt Journal.

 

Button-Embellished Journal 

Red Felt Journal with Holly Fabric

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Iris Felt Journal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purple Peacock Feather Journal
 

Leather Books

I made so many leather books this year… it would take ages to describe them all! So I’m not going to do that just now… I will just post a few photos instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Leather “Dear Heart” Journal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Cream Leather Journal

 

Red leather journal with cream strap fastening. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assortment of Leather Books

 

Longstitch Journal in Wine Suede and Black Leather

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Longstitch Journal in soft Red Leather with natural edge detail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cream Leather Journal with fancy Longstitch & strap fastening with handmade button
 

 

Large Cream Leather Guestbook with red marbled lining paper, Small Red Leather Journal

* * *

These are books I have made in recent weeks:

 

 

 Deep Green Leather Journal with strap and pen-holder, decorative bead on fastening.

 

 

 

Deep Green Leather Journal with pink strap fastening, decorative longstitch binding and red patterned paper lining (I love this!)

 

 

 

Deep Wine-Red Leather Chapbook, with cream pages. Cover is unlined (suede inside)

 

 

 

 

 

Deep Pink Leather Chapbook with ribbon page-markers. Lined with hand-marbled paper by Rhonda Miller. Cream pages.

 

 

Scarlet Leather Journal Cover (for ready-made refill), with red-spotted lining/end-papers

 

There are a lot of photos here already, so I didn’t want to post any more to show more details. 

However, if you’re interested in seeing more of these books, you can go and see the photos I have at my Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/LizzieMade?ref=tn_tnmn#!/LizzieMade/photos_albums – This will take you to the general “Albums” list and you can choose which album(s) to look at!

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed having a look at what I have been doing.  Usually I’ve posted stuff as I went along, but there’s been so little time in the past few months, that I just couldn’t manage that.

 
Thanks for looking!

A Bit of a Thing for Red...

I've been busy bookbinding recently, even if I haven't blogged much.  The situation with my mum's health, has meant I have had to close my order book for the complex, bigger books and albums, that I was making up until the summer.  In an effort to keep the business running, at least in some measure, I'm fitting in as many smaller books as I can. 

 

I posted yesterday, about a batch of card-covered notebooks - many with rainbows of coloured pages.  These have been such fun to make! 

 

However, I've also made a number of other books in the last couple of weeks - and looking back, it seems that I currently have a bit of a "thing" for Red!

A ribbon-bound Japanese style stab-stitch notebook, size approx 6 x 4 ins.  Covers are in a deep red-purple marbled paper, which I "collected" recently, when exploring paper sources on the internet. 

The first book has a brother! 

This one is bound in black linen thread and has a deep maroon suede strip to wrap the bound edge, beneath the covers. 

Both have 60 pages of white paper and a hinged front cover. 
 

I love the gold marbling on this paper, but the shades of red, purple and magenta in the marbled paper are just beautiful too!

 

* * * 

 

A floral Japanese stab-stitch book, with a hinged front cover.  I found this paper when out for the day, in Cambridge.  It was so pretty and I immediately knew I wanted to use it for a book like this. 

 

The bound edge has a deep red-mauve suede embellishment on each cover.   It has 40 pages of paper, which is a medium-weight cream paper, with a lovely texture. It would be a nice guest book, I think. 

 

Not quite a "red" book, but certainly on the redder side of purple!

 

* * *

 

A pamphlet-style or "chapbook" journal, in a deep red leather. 

 

This is such gorgeous soft leather, that I left it completely alone - no lining, no adornment, other than the lovely Celtic Knot, which I used as a fastener, along with a charcoal suede strip. 

 

It's bound in a single section, with black linen cord and filled with some gorgeous cream laid paper that I bought for making text blocks. This comes in great sheets (A1 size) and I folded and hand-tore the pages of the book, to give a nice torn edge detail.

 

It feels great to handle and the cover is kind of soft and floppy - which just adds to its charm really.  I love this one and want to keep it - occupational hazard I suppose!

 

* * *

 

 

 

An addition to my "set" of five hand-embellished wool felt journals. 

 

This has a warm red felt cover, lined with so-soft deep grey suede. 

 

It's embellished with applique in red suede, black & moss green silk, plus two pieces of Liberty Tana Lawn, in the "Strawberry Thief" design. 

It has embroidery in gold and silk threads, plus three semi-precious stones and a heart-shaped nacre button. 

 

I made a knotted suede button and twisted linen cord, for the fastening (seen in the final photo).  It has 40 pages of lovely hand made paper, with the fab naturally deckled edges, plus "inclusions" of red rose-like flower petals and green leaf pieces.  I bound it in a Longstitch, using black linen. 

 

* * *

 

 

And still on the Table, is this little mini-journal.

 

It's made with the same red leather as the chapbook journal above.  But it is small - barely 3" high! 

 

The paper is also the same cream, laid paper, as the chapbook.  It translated beautifully, to this mini-book form.  I decided to make the book up with a longstitch binding, with six sections of pages - each with four pages, making 24 in total (that's 48 sides of paper). 

 

I like the shape of the wrap-over piece, which is why I haven't cut it off, but left it as a wrap cover.  However, I'm not sure what sort of fastening to give it.  It does need something... could be a button, or a single tie - leather strip, linen cord, or ribbon? I'm mulling over a few ideas and will try some options out.  It's such a sweet little book - I hope to finish it tonight!

 

* * *

So, there's a bit of a peek at my current "red trend".  Along with the Rainbow books, it's been pretty bright and cheerful at my binding table recently!

 

(Just in case you're interested, most of these books are for sale in my "LizzieMade" shops, at Etsy.com and Folksy.com ;-)