Wednesday Worktable - Wednesday 25th November - Rainbow Houses and Felty Books

Good Morning All!  A contribution to Julia's WOYWW (What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday), at her Julia-Dunnit Blog.  I try to join in as often as I can and I really enjoy seeing what everyone else is up to - especially at this time of year, when desks start to look quite exciting!

So, first of all... I Finished the Bunting:

Here are the little houses, on two strings.  Not quite on my desk, but several of you did ask to see the finished buntings.  I won't bore you with more photos, but if you really want to see more, there is a little photo album on my Facebook page, which you are more than welcome to view - see it here!  

And on my desk?

This green felt journal was finished over the weekend.  It's made of lovely soft wool felt, lined with a holly-sprinkled cotton fabric, with golden highlights.  I embroidered the cover with red, green and gold, to make it extra pretty, then bound it with black linen thread and added a fine red satin ribbon tie.

Inside, you can see the fabric lining.  The pages are made with hand made Indian cotton-rag paper. The edges have their natural deckle, from the moulds in which each sheet is made.  

It's really nice paper, with a texture from the fine mesh that each sheet lies on as it is made in the frame. The cotton paper pulp is lifted out of the vat with a frame, over which a mesh is stretched.  It is shaken to form a layer - or sheet - and most of the water drained off.  Then it is tipped out to dry in the sunshine! 

Anyway, paper-making lesson over... I also made this, which I finished today:

A soft blue felt journal, with white and gold embroidery.  Decorated with a white felt snowflake.  I added a gold organza ribbon tie, which is nice and shimmery.  It is bound in longstitch, with ivory linen.  

The journal is lined with this fab snowman printed cotton fabric, with golden highlights.  Very Seasonal! 

The book is my favourite cream laid "Character" paper, with nice hand-cut edges.  This is such lovely paper - crisp and really good to write on. 

Thank you for coming to see what I've been doing.  I also have a photo album and some leather journal covers on the go... but I forgot to photograph them!  I'll post about them soon, so feel free to come back later in the week and see what else is going on.

Why not pop back to Julia's Blog and have a look at what else is happening this week?

Wednesday Worktable - 26th November 2014 - More Felt Books

This is my contribution to WOYWW (What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday), over at JuliaDunnit's Blog. Each Wednesday, Julia invites fellow crafters and bloggers to show a photo or two of their worktables, and explain what they've been doing.

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My work "table" is really a Work Basket just now.  I'm busy stitching embroidered covers, for a number of felt journals, to add to my Christmas stock.

Blue felt with snowman fabric lining, white and gold embroidery; green felt with holly fabric lining and cover edging, red, green and gold embroidery; grey felt cover, to be embroidered and lined with blue suede; large piece of hand made felt, in red, green and gold - to be made into Something, but not entirely decided yet! 

I'm embellishing the covers with hand embroidery.  After this, I will use longstitch, to bind several sections of pages, in lovely paper.  Hope to have them finished very soon!

They will be for sale, along with three that are already in my LizzieMade shops (www.lizziemade.folksy.com / www.lizziemade.etsy.com).  Feel free to visit! 

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That's my contribution to the WOYWW Story this week - thanks for reading.  

Why not pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground and see what else is going on in the crafting world?

Wednesday Worktable - 12th November 2014 - Felt Books

This is my contribution to WOYWW (What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday), over at JuliaDunnit's Blog. Each Wednesday, Julia invites fellow crafters and bloggers to show a photo or two of their worktables, and explain what they've been doing.

My Very Messy Table! 

Actually, this is the top of my lovely big Plan Chest, which I use as a binding table, as it's a good height for that work.  It is in rather a mess - I'm sort-of messing around with several projects at once (not really a good plan), which means I have bits & pieces all over the place.  

These are the  main things on the go just now though. 

 

Top left: bits of paper from a Christmas Decoration Making session.  I made three sets of Christmas Star Books last week - they came out really beautifully and sold immediately - note to self, make more! (and maybe a tutorial on my blog, if I can make time).

Bottom Left: Two finished books, that I've just posted for sale in my online shops.  The bottom one is the black leather book I was working on when I last posted for WOYWW (22nd October!). Other events meant that the book took a bit longer to complete than I anticipated, so it's just been offered for sale this week.

The second book, on the top, is the first Buttonhole Binding I have ever made. I love that little penguin, in his fancy-dress  pudding costume! The spine and covers of the book have slots cut into them, so you can see the sets of pages inside.  Each set of pages has a decorative wrap, each one different and all from the same set of papers as the cover, so they all co-ordinate.  The stitching is red linen and looks very effective against the green suede spine. 

"Little Pudding" Penguin book, with Buttonhole Binding. 

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In the Centre of the Table:  Two sets of covers and pages, for Christmas Felt Journals.  The Felt is cut out and lined with Christmassy fabrics - you can see the linings in the second photo of the desk (the close-up) and the felt outsides in the top photo (also, to the right of the top photo, are some felt pieces and larger pieces of fabric for the linings - they're so nice!) 

I will decorate the book covers with embroidery, before binding the sets of pages with Longstitch, in contrasting linen threads.  I hope to make some more felt journals in the next couple of weeks - they do seem to sell well at Christmas time. 

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My Felt Stash, waiting to be made into Books and things.  

I have several large pieces of woolfelt (some are 1/2 metre), plus a small pile there of 6" squares, which are very thick and "felty" feeling - I will use those for decorations, I think.  On the top of the larger sheets, there are three pieces of hand-made felt, which I bought from a felt-maker at Folksy.com.  I want to make some very special books with those, as they are really gorgeous - especially that red, green and silver piece on the top! 

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That's my contribution to the WOYWW Story this week - thanks for reading.  

Why not pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground and see what else is going on in the crafting world?

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

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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!