i recently found myself in a rather touchy predicament: in archivers (my local paper store), with coupons, with money, without recent sleep. for those christians or friends of christians among you, dear readers, you will know that holy week has long been called Hell Week by those of us required by service/devotion/whateverthehellwouldpossessapersontohaveelevenservicesinoneweek (gasp) and for a good reason. we had an early choir practice on wednesday, service on thursday, service on friday, service on saturday, and, oh wait!, two services on sunday. so i arrived at archivers late (as in five minutes to nine) friday night. luckily, they have a soccermom/scrapbooking session on fridays, so the store stays pretty loose about what constitutes “closing time” on those nights. i browse the store, trying to hurry up and decide what to buy w/ my 30% coupon, and finally alight upon a clock. it’s pretty much a blank piece of MDF with clock parts, so you can decorate it as you see fit. (incidentally, my mother’s suggestion was to do a doctor who montage on it. the design’s still open for suggestions.) so we get to the register, and the check out lady (who turns out also to be the store manager) rings up the goods and says, “You know, if you spend eleven more dollars, you can get the free paper pack.”

yes, loyal readers, there was no further point in her trying to convince me, i was, at this point, duty bound to spend eleven more dollars at the paper store. so i wander off to the velveteen paper section and come back with no less than eight sheets of the most expensive paper in the store. the lady makes fun of me, but rewards me with a SHEAF of chipboard. (she was hysterical, by the way. i love that store.) the moral of this story is never to go into a paper store with a coupon AND cash in hand.

unless you want to end up making something awesome like this. after a two-hour Service Recovery nap this afternoon, i rose ready to Book, and Book i did. i made five different books of various types this afternoon, two of them utilizing the results of my previous coupons to the archivers, a bind-it-all. for those of you who are not aquainted w/ its fancy-ness, it is a spiral binding machine. it cuts the holes and shapes the wire for you, all with you shunking down one lever. it’s pretty nice. requires a little finess to get the holes exactly proper, and a few tries with the smooshing of the wires, but after a try or two, i had it down pat, and i’ve been looking for things to bind w/ it ever since. i’ve got a pair of web password books hanging around this house waiting to be listed, but in the meanwhile, i made this. the die cut paper and the green polka dots came from the fated Free Paper Pack, and there’s even a couple of sheets of the Reward Chipboard in there to make sure you can write on it w/out it bending all over the darn place. the binding, actually, i saw at the archivers, too, the double style there. there were a couple mass-produced notebooks in a little turnstile thing with bindings in that style, and i thought, i’ve got extra little o-wires hanging out, i could do that with ’em. so i did. and now it’s for sale. enjoy~

Labels: craft, etsy, facts

upon seeing my graily replica diary, my friend exclaimed that she needed a Bond book. something not necessarily NERdy, per se, and obviously not a replica, since young mr bond is not known for his fondness for ancient tomes, but rather, something that would fit right in with that ethos, something, perhaps, that they might sell as Bond Swag. thus was i tasked with the creation of just such an item, and thus did i begin the search for inspiration. my first stop? eBay, of course, were one may find swag both real and imagined. one of the first to catch my eye was a CD emblazoned with the MI6 logo, a rampant lion and rampant horse in a circle. i also saw some movie scripts with “autographs” of the cast members, but the client liked the idea of a Bond dossier, as, frankly, did i.

for those of you already bored with this post, you may find the rest of this post a tad bland. for those of you interested in the creation process, however, please continue on.

this was my first time w/ a new binding style, one i don’t even know the name of. i saw a picture of it in a book conservation manual and performed what i call the zen of carolyn: i took one look at the picture and instantly understood how to do it. yays! (^_^) alas, it turned out to take sooo much longer that i thought. of course, the book is huge, so that was a factor, too, but then i had to go and decide that stations every half inch was the way to go. silly me. the book’s 11.25 by 8.5 inches (a british small demy quarto, for those of you interested), so that’s like 20 stations. 22. something like that, anyway. not like i stopped to count. i started yesterday, and the girl’s birthday was/is today, so i was on, shall we say, a slight deadline.

after a couple moments of poking nasty holes in my table (giving my table a lived-in texture that will be popular one day, damn it, if i have to start that revolution myself!) i got to move on to the sewing part. the first signature was as easy as most, except that you leave a little loop out of the stations, so i had to find a way to keep those things from stripping out and joining their brethren on the inside of the book instead of the outside, where they were suppose to be. so i sliced off a length of hemp cord and wrapped my binding thread around that.

joining that second signature is where we got to the real fun, though. you go up to that first station like normal, but then when you come out of the second station, you thread your needle through that loop you left hanging out of the first signature. this is the part where i thank god for the internets and pictures, because otherwise i’d have no idea how to explain this to you. anyhow, you then enter that second signature via that second station (yup, the one you just came out of, go back in there) and continue down to the next station. it’s actually fairly simple, and it’s really easy, it just seems to take longer than the other case binding stitch i use. plus, i hardly ever make books this large.

when i was finally done with the binding, it was time to tackle the cover. originally, i planned on doing some half-leather style (with the seperate spine and corner triangles, for those of you uninitiated to the horrors of bookbinding terms) but i didn’t have enough of the book cloth i wanted to use, so while i was casting about for alternatives, i rediscovered this creepy alligator skin or whatever textured paper and decided to go for that. then i turned back to my original MI6 logo idea and had a ball with it. the original pictures i had found on ebay didn’t print up too well, so i went back to the internets and it delivered once more. i found one w/ the animals and the text, but w/ a coat of arms, too. so i printed that one out and embossed the hell out of it (note to the unwary: photo paper does not hold up well under heat) and then glued it on. it looked a tad out of place, so i busted out another round of embossing and it finally looked good. it would be better if i could do it in metal and emboss that, or maybe some etching or something, but my skill level isn’t quite that high yet. not that i don’t have instructions on copper electroplating…

anyhow! thoughts of accidentally electrocuting myself in pursuit of The Craft aside, i then busted out my fancy new 007 stamp and some metallic inks and added a little touch to the bottom corner of each page. the first zero turned out a little weird, but the other number and that gun symbol turned out pretty good, huh?

further reading: for those of you interested in learning more about the bookbinding technique used in today’s post, i recommend a book entitle Conservation Book Repair by one Artemis BonaDea. not only is this technique right from that book, there’s tons of other awesome book-conserving info in there. i actually read it for that, since i was repairing a lady’s prayer book from church, and i just discovered it had this technique by happy accident.

Labels: craft, etsy, facts

that’s right, a redesign of the redesign. well, i just decided that it didn’t mesh w/ my vision enough to let it slide, so i came up with a whole new vision. frankly, i like this one better. also, for once, my blog and my HP now match. i know, shocking. also shocking is the complete lack of images. this is all text. well, obviously except for the blogger button, which you will now find at the bottom of the page. my NERdly knowledge of CSS triumphs once more!

also, brown.

let’s see, do i have any real news? oh, yes, you will soon my blog @ blog.notuboc.com. total blog integration ftw. and BEST is still having it’s charity drive, so go check it out! http://bestbooks.blogspot.com. we need our own domain, dontcha think?

by the way, if you don’t have the Blackadder ITC font, you should get it. Courier New just doesn’t cut it here, you know?

Labels: etsy, facts, NERd

a) this book bored me to tears. remove it from my presence.
b) this commision is late because i couldn’t quite bring myself to care about it.
c) i’ll give you free shipping to lose my email address.

i know it’s tempting, ladies and gentlemen, but please. restrain yourself.

in other news, i am nearly finished with a young indiana jones diary for the same chap who ordered the replica grail diary. frankly, the inking was pretty boring, but the coloring was kind of relaxing (especially considering i had enough free time at work to do it there (^_^) ) and the binding went like a snap. the covers are looking pretty slick, too, if i do say so myself. i should have it all done tomorrow and then i can slip it quietly away in the shaded recesses of my book box until the payment traverses the atlantic ocean. oh, and i’ve got to find a good shot of the titanic’s tickets. shouldn’t be too hard. google search brought me about a billion of ’em, now i’ve got to sort the bad from the good and make my own replica.

also in other news, etsy‘s Alchemy is back! woohoo~ for those of you who don’t know, Alchemy is a place where you can request custom items. it’s like a little commission request area right w/in etsy. if you want it, you can request it. then people will bid on it, and you can select the bid you like, and they’ll make the thing for you. then they list it on etsy and you buy it. sim.ple. i got a few good commissions back before alchemy was shut down, so i’m fairly excited about the new version. i’ve already put in a few bids. one was already declined, so i guess there’s good and bad (^_^) but i’m just happy it’s back. they’ve been working on it forever. kinda like me and this poor indy jones diary. man, that chap’s patient.

oh, yes, also. the BESTbooks charity event is still going. we’re into week three? four? now and we’re raised almost $150, so go buy a book and join the fun~

Labels: books, craft, etsy, facts

ok, so, like, three months ago or something (!) i entered a the manglish contest over at manganovel. i just got the results. well, not even the results, just the results of the first round of judging. on the one hand, i made it past the first round. on the other hand, the announcement email contained phrases such as “Manganovel proundly announces you the result of the first stage” and the above-reference “Conglaturations!” it also turns out to be addressed to “Dear contestant on the manglish contest.” i can only hope that i make it fairly far in this contest so that i might be able to offer my assistence to them directly… although the free ipod i get if i win the thing wouldn’t be to horrible either.

the other reason i have to be conglaturating myself is that i just made my very first order at talas of NYC. i ordered a very cool horn folder, a specially shaped bone folder, a chiyogami sample book, and an instructional book on how to hand-make headbands. for those of you not NERdy enough to know what a book headband is, i am discussing the small rounded bits of thread/cloth/weaving that have been placed at the top and bottom of your book, just at the spine. these were originally made by hand, and were intended to protect the top and bottom of the bok block spine. in my neverending battle for total and utter perfection, i must master every traditional technique known to man. i’ve got a couple types of case binding, coptic stitching and a couple types of japanese binding under my belt, so it’s time to go for the details, i think.

speaking of bookbinding, i’m in the midst of making a sort of series/limited edition at the moment. the covers are all textured chipboard of varying colors and the pages are all different types. i’ve got some sketch paper, some kraft paper, some antique style laid paper, some newsprint, a little of everything. i still haven’t really decided, but i’m leaning towards sending these off for consignment. i’ve sold a couple of things at the frame station, but i’ve been very neglectful of them as of late, and i mean to correct that! now if only i had the ambition to sew these things together this evening…

Labels: books, facts, NERd, translation

and the pathetically depressing. today was my choir director’s last day. we had ice cream and cake and showered her with presents, one of which was a copy of Ray’s Practical Arithmatic or some such hideously titled thing that i ripped the text block out of and inserted a blank one into, in order to reduce the overall stress on the universe caused by the existance of such esoteric word problems. apparently, she’s heard of the book before, and had some unpleasant memories of her time with it in her younger days. she greeted the sight of the book w/ a face normally reserved for the taste of particularly stale lemons, and when i handed it to her, i felt compelled to open the book for her, lest she think i was aiming to further her studies or something. (^_^) then she regaled us w/ tales from her childhood whilst we devoured nearly an entire ice cream cake. it was quite wonderful, actually. to tell you the truth, i’ve been quite depressed about her leaving us, especially under such lame circumstances. this is a church, for christ’s sake (ahahah), shouldn’t we be able to work things out? of course, not knowing all the details, not particularly interested in knowing all the details, i’m pretty much default in sarita’s corner, but to be perfectly frank w/ you, internets, i’m sick of talking about it. what i’d really like to talk about is that book. i didn’t finish it in time to get any good pictures of it, so i had to rely on my camera phone.

i was able to save quite a lot from the original book. the book block itself came out pretty easily, considering that the way the thing was glued together, it seemed like the creators wanted to make sure that they were discussing how to reduce fractions right alongside oil prices in the Thunderdome. i had to make my own bookblock about a time and a half, since the first time, i made it too thick and it only barely fit in the case. after i took a sledgehammer to it (yes, they do let me have things like that here. i like it here!) it behaved well enough. and i set carolyn’s lead/steel/whatever block on it. that thing’s HEAVY. anyhow, after that, it was quite well-behaved, and so i set about gluing it back into the casing. i had to destroy the end papers when i took the original block out, which pissed me off since the endpapers on my first tear-out-the-original-and-put-in-your-own expirement (coming soon to an etsy store near YOU!) stayed intact like THEY wanted to be what was discussed in the Thunderdome.

the really fun part of this book, though, was the pocket. frankly, i’ve never made a pocket for a book before, and i wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. a couple of test runs w/ my trusty moleskine for a template, though, and it soon whipped itself into shape. i used a couple of pages from the book itself to form the pocket (“you’ll be happy to know i tore the book apart” i told sarita) and although it’s not an exact replica for the moleskines (their pockets are glued behind the endpapers, for those of you keeping tabs. i didn’t have the presence of mind to check whether they were or not before gluing the endpapers down.) it looks pretty damn good if i do say so myself. it’s about five inches tall, so it’ll hold little notes and stuff, and it’s expandable, at least at the top, so it can hold a couple of layers worth of stuff. i may have to put one in my above-mentioned first trial, although it is a bit smaller.

also, i have re-re-re-designed notubóc.com. and not a moment too soon, either. sarita was all like, “You should sell these things!” (which, frankly, she says every time i bring a book to choir, but it cracks me up every single time, coz i’m like, girl, you’ve even written down my URL before, i know you’re busy, but maybe the lack of sleep is beginning to effect your brain?) and i was like, “i do!” and i gave her my card (and then gave the rest of the choir my card, since everybody asked for one) so i came home and went straight to work on the new site. the old one had some picture issues, and i was looking for something a little more analogue-revolution-y. it didn’t quite turn out how i wanted, but i don’t know enough Flash yet to fully realize my Vision! (^_^) i wanted a bunch of gears and more Victorian Flair, but i’m also not an artist (and woe is me, seriously) so i’ll have to work on that a little more. eventually, i’d like to have the whole thing in flash, with shiny gears and an RSS feed from my etsy store and an integrated blog and the whole works, but for now, at least it’s functional and moderately attractive. i did make an animated banner…

…edited blog template to follow…

Labels: facts

but hopefully not a post you will ignore. we over at etsybooks have decided to use our power for good, and have started up a charity event. it’s an ongoing thing, and we’ll be rotating charities every few months.

and our very first is… (drum roll please)

H.E.L.P. International!

they’re a charity that promotes international health, education and literacy (woot books!). a list of available books for this charity drive (and indeed any ongoing etsybooks charity drives) by one of two methods: search on etsy for “bestbooks” and “charity,” or check out our blog post about the festivities. 100% of the proceeds (minus fees and shipping costs of course) will be donated to H.E.L.P International, so get a buying, and H.E.L.P promote health, education and literacy around the world~

Labels: books, craft, etsy, facts

i recently found myself giving a lecture on NERdage, specifically, the NERdage i recently produced in the form of a full-on replica Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Grail Dairy. it was ordered by a guy who saw my previous efforts, and it took me about three weeks. to be perfectly frank, i undercharged him a little, but, as stated above, i was compensated in other ways. (^_^) my mother blurted out at our church choir meeting last week about my project, so i decided to bring the finish product with me this week. when our singing was over, i announced my show and tell, and was soon surrounded by the entire choir – admitedly only about 10 people, but we’ll overlook that little detail in the interest of storytelling – eager to hear me explain every little detail of my newest creation, up to and including the small points on which my version differs from the several prop versions – the cover material, page order, and hitler’s signature – and the many NERdages in which my sister and i were forced to engage – christ, that sound porny – in order to produce the coolest possible diary – sooo many clips from YouTube watched, sooo many sites visited…

the pictures of this NERd quest can be found at flickr, there are 12 shots, including some of the pages, and most of the inserts i made. for those of you already sick with the NERdage in this post, i urge you to bail now. for the rest of you, notes on my creation process follow:

i started by dunking each page in coffee – specifically a french roast – to get that nice aged look and color, and then i divided them up into signatures – sections of pages folded together for those of you not up on your bookbinding parlance. i printed out the pictures from the above-mentioned web sources, traced them all onto the pages using a uniball pen that’s out of ink – luff that thing, i do – and graphite paper – i swear i looked like a coal miner for a few days there – and then used a couple of different sizes of pilot V pen to ink them all. i then moved on to writing all the text in, altering my handwriting slightly to get a closer match with henry jones’s – not like that required much work, my handwriting and his are surprisingly similar in the sloppy category. then it was time for binding, and the question that i had been avoiding for days: what material to bind with. i don’t have any leather, so i had first intended to go with some dark ultrasuede i have lying around, but i also have some lighter suede-textured contact paper, and it struck me that this contact paper was similar in color to the way the diary must have looked when it was new. so i covered the journal in that stuff and pressed the heck out of it on my pretty handmade book press. then i aged it fastwind style with some olive oil and some elbow grease.

then it was out to the porch for a little aging of the inserts! my customer – whose NERdness i am not worthy to contemplate (^_^) – found me an unmutilated photo of the grail rubbing, so i printed out the grail rubbing and then rubbed it on the concrete of my porch to give it a stone texture. i would say this is the least perfect part of the diary, but it still looks alright. the inserts were a super blast! i got to exploit my paper fetish, as many inserts needed to be crafted from different types of paper. there was the light typewriter paper for the letters – and yes, i did use an actual typewriter for those, i have three – the newsprint for the newspaper articles – complete with fake ads on the back – the cardstock for the tickets, the photo paper for the old portrait, and even a funeral card from indiana’s mother’s funeral.

all in all, a good day’s three weeks’ work for a NERd…

edit: one more picture for the masses:

Labels: facts

as in, i am. we’ve had mandatory overtime at my (new) job this week (10 hours a day) and we’ve pretty much all been brainless. especially today. even the people who’ve been there a long time are like, this has been the most hectic week ever. so at least i don’t feel bad… tonight, however, i get to do whatever the hell i please, thank you very much! SLEEP! HERE I COME!

also, the boob-muda triangle.

Labels: facts, work

leaving aside the possible repercussions of the double six, we’ll move straight on to the important information:

i am having a sale this week as part of an en masse BESTbooks street team sale. for more information on which of us are participating, you can see the BESTbooks blog. bbb. by the way, check out our awesome christmas theme. we rock, we know. (^_^) anyhow, i am offering free shipping this week, friday the 7th thru friday the 14th. if you’d like to put bestbooks in the memo when you buy, please feel free, but it’s not required. enjoy~

– the analogue revolution.

Labels: books, craft, facts