February Photos - Finale!

Here is the final installment of my February photos - a little later than scheduled, due to a brief but stressful hospital stay for the small girl (she's fine now!)

I know life is always full of lumps and bumps, but I think I'm ready for some plain sailing, for awhile at least!

1. Unicorn! I've been taking product shots for these guys, and FINALLY listing them in my shop Here! Also, the fabric in the background is of my own design: Spoonflower were doing free samples, so I got one for a laugh. Now I want to make more! 

2. I won a competition! This is the lovely painting by the very clever Lily Reilly of  Petal to Petal which I was lucky enough to win in a facebook competition - I've been a fan of her work for awhile now, so I was delighted to have a piece to hang on my walls - now to find the perfect spot! 

3, 4, & 5 : All these are taken on a day trip we took to Cobh with my Mum before she flew back to NZ. Although it wasn't a perfectly lovely day weather wise, it was still lovely to be by the seaside, and it didn't rain for most of the day! Result! 

Especially considering we'd just had this the day before:  

(I figured out how to make GIFs. There is no stopping me now!) 

xx

Tutorial: Envelope Book

A long long time ago, way back in 2007, I made an envelope book for my Mum. A dear friend recently asked me how I made it, and even though I found the instructions I followed originally, I wanted to make a tutorial to show my own version, using materials I have lying around the house. 

If there's anything unclear in my descriptions, leave me a comment and I'll try and clarify. There are other really good tutorials out there on how to bind books, so maybe have a look on Youtube and see if you can pick up some extra tips.

But what shall we do with a book made from envelopes? My dear friend wants to use it as a recipe collection, and I think it would make a great thing to keep little paper keepsakes from a wedding, or a lovely travel journal. And you can use any size envelopes to make this too! Big envelopes make for big possibilities!  

So lets Begin!

You will need:

Envelopes (I suggest about 10, but as many as you want)

Stiff Cardboard (or book binder's board)

Patterned Paper

Coloured Paper

Fabric (or Binding Tape)

Cutting Tool (craft knife)

Metal Ruler

Scissors

Binder Clips

Tough Glue*

Strong Thread and Needle

 Small Nail (or something sharp to make small holes.)

Hammer 

*I used a glue gun for parts of this, but a tough craft glue should do the trick. Also, spray adhesive makes some parts easier, but it's not necessary. 

STEP 1

Measure your envelopes! Then take your Stiff Cardboard and cut 2 pieces the same size as your envelopes. Also, Take your coloured paper, and cut 2 pieces the same size as the envelopes, and 2 pieces the same height as your envelope, but twice as wide. For example, my envelopes were 11x16 cm, so I cut 2 pieces of coloured paper the same size, and 2 pieces 22x16 cm. 

STEP 2 

On one of your small pieces of coloured paper, mark a row of dots 5mm apart, 5mm in from the bottom end of the long edge. This are the marks for the stitching which will bind your envelope book together. Place a coloured page on either side of your envelope stack, making sure the dotted line on the CLOSED edge of the envelopes.This is really important, because if you stitch the top of the envelopes into the spine, your envelope book will be useless as an envelope book. (Ask me how I know...)

 Clip the envelope stack together with the binder clips.

(This isn't pictured here, because I forgot to include the coloured paper in my stack. I glued it in later, but this way works better)

Once the envelopes are secure, take your sharp pointy object and make a hole through the pile of envelopes on each dot. I held my nail in place with the Pliers and then Hammered it in, which did the job, but I'm sure there is a more elegant way of doing this part! 

STEP 3 

Thread your needle with your thread - Waxed thread is supposed to be good for this, and I seem to recall someone recommending dental floss (Minty!) Then stitch up your book through the holes you have drilled. There are several stitches you can use for this, you can use a basic back stitch,  blanket stitch, or check out this tutorial on Japanese Stab Binding on Design Sponge. 

Take off the clips, your envelopes are all nicely stitched up and ready to be popped into their cover.

STEP 4

Measure how deep your envelope bundle is across the stitching where the spine will be, and cut a piece from your stiff card this wide, and as long as the envelope. (In my case, this piece was a handy 5mm wide) This will be the Spine.

Also, cut a 5mm piece from the edge of the two envelope sized cards, and keep the trimming! 

Cover the two remaining pieces, the covers, with your patterned paper, making sure that it overlaps on the back a bit, and you glue it down well. 

STEP 5

Cut your fabric so that it's a bit longer than the cover boards, and wide enough to overlap onto the front of the cover boards when folded in half lengthways. Iron the edges so there's no raw edges showing, and lay your Spine, the two 5mm trim pieces and the covers onto the fabric as shown in the picture. Glue in place, fold over the top fabric and glue down also. Your cover is now pretty much finished, we just have to put the two together.

STEP 6

More Glue! This time, make a line of glue down the spine of the envelope bundle and place on spine on the cover. Spread Glue over each stitched side of the envelope stack and stick to the 5mm pieces of card either side of the spine. Leave to Dry. 

 After the glue has dried, take one of the long pieces of coloured paper. Cover with glue, line up one end with the corners of the small coloured page, and the other a couple of millimeters from the edge of the inside cover. Smooth out and close the book, making sure the long page creases smoothly and doesn't poke out anywhere. Leave to dry, and I do believe it's done! 

I think you deserve a cookie after all that. Or a cool Dinosaur sticker at least. 

Maybe you could keep them in your shiny new Envelope book? 

xx

Hollytron

New Toys!

I made myself a lightbox today! I came across this tutorial and thought I'd give it a go... Seems to have worked okay! Since it was such a nice day I thought I'd try and make good use of the sunlight and take some photos of my new toys....

The new toys are - Shrink plastic, new mini-business cards (which are going to multi-task as labels)  from Moo...

And I found a little craft shop in town that sells daylight bulbs! So now I can take nice photos at night time too! (Do you like my shrinky-tea lady? I think she's destined for the shop, once I find a nice brooch back for her.)

The main reason for wanting a working lightbox is that I'm gearing up to add these customisable  invitations to my shop.... I'm still mulling over the wording of the etsy listing, but it should be ready to go in a couple of days! I know that this one isn't particularly wedding-ish, but I thought it would be nice to design an invitation that could be used for any event - wedding or otherwise!

Hooray for productivity! 

x

Sketchbook Collection

Hello! 

Lets start off the new year with some pictures, shall we? 

I like to dig through my old notebooks and have a look at what I was drawing this time last year...

See how things have changed over time...

and how some things stay the same. 

So all the best to you, may your year be filled to the brim with good things, and oddly lacking in the rubbish things. 

x

HollyTron

P.S. In the long, three month gap between posts, I updated my Portfolio Website. I'm pretty pleased with it! You also may have noticed the slight change in arrangements around here - It feels good to have a fresh look for a fresh year! 

Echo!

I haven't blogged for awhile because I have been busy... usually doing things I want to blog about. 

I've been doing a little bit of this:

A little bit of that: 

with a sprinkling of the other:

I'm also in the process of making the Halloween costumes for the kids - They're dressing up as Link and Zelda this year (Their request - Nerdy Parenting WIN) and I found a handy guide for making medieval dresses Here which I'm going to modify. Should be fun, right?

So that's what I've been doing. What are you up to? 

xx

GUESS WHAT

I have plans. Not big, megalomaniac ones, (but not small, insipid ones either,) and they're going to be going hand in hand with a bit of Blog-Redesign.

Now, I know we've been through this all before. Which is why I'm writing this post and saving it as a draft, and I'm only going to publish it once the plans are ACTUALLY in motion. So if you're reading this, we're past the whole "Oh she SAYS she has plans and I'll believe it when I see it!" phase of the endeavor.

OK. So after all this build-up, you might be wondering what these plans are, and I have two words for you.

Printable Stationery.

.......

So maybe it falls in the slightly insipid end of the plan scale, - it's not going to cure cancer or anything -  but if you have an occasion to use stationery, (say, a birthday card!) and you want a quick, easy, inexpensive and relatively instant solution to your lack of stationery, (eg: OMG, I FORGOT TO GET A CARD FOR X'S BIRTHDAY AND I SEE THEM IN FIVE MINUTES!!!) I think printable stationery comes into the fore.

Having said that, I don't have any cards ready YET. But I DO  have, designed and ready to launch, note-paper and envelope sets, which I will also offer as personalized invitations. (ooh! Custom stationery!) I'm also working on designing birthday and greeting cards, labels and tags for home-made gifts, Paper Dolls and other Printable toys and goodies.

If all that takes off, I'd like to offer real PHYSICAL stationery and paper toys that are printed on lovely paper and comes in a package in the mail (because buying real things on the internet is always like buying a present for yourself!)

My Esty shop is HERE and will launch on the 24th of August, 10am GMT, which is less than a week away! 

Have I mentioned that I'm both excited and nervous? 

Because I REALLY am!

xx

Hollytron

AS AN ASIDE: On my trip to Google to check that I had the correct spelling of stationery, (as opposed to stationary - I play fast and loose with grammar and spelling all the time, but some things you have to get right!) I came across the Wikipedia page for Stationery, and was delighted to discover that the name came from the STATIONARY nature of the merchants who sold  goods near universities, and that the Stationer's Company were a big ye-olde mega-company and were the first to use copyright. 

History is Fun :)

x

Knit Happens

I've been knitting again. 

Top Picture is before blocking, bottom two are during and after. 

It's the Holden Shawlette, (Ravelry link Here!) using Hedgehog Fibres Silk Merino seconds and I love it to pieces! It was my first lace project, and thus riddled with mistakes, but the shape is about right, and only I know where the mistakes are, so not too much harm done. 

The best part is the colour - as you can see, it is Brown, Purple and Grey, depending on the light (as Illustrated by the photographs) and thus goes with EVERYTHING.  

So yes, I knitted it and blocked it all by myself and I feel really clever. 

On to the Robot Jumper!!

P.S. I'm also working on a new Etsy shop project which will hopefully be launched on Thursday the 23th of August. I'm slightly terrified*, but also hopeful... and really looking forward to sharing pictures! 

*Okay, change that to plain old terrified! AHHH!

Positive Procrastination

Everybody procrastinates, right? Well, there must be some people out there who don't, otherwise nobody would get anything done, and we wouldn't have cool stuff like Robots and Video Phones. (We're living in the future baby!)

But I digress. The point is that sometimes, those things we do to procrastinate aren't all bad. For example, I was all fired up about getting a new project underway. I had allotted myself an hour* to sit down and do some sketches. But did I do that which I set out to do? No. I cleaned my desk.

In fact, I sorted the entire workroom, but I only have photographic evidence of the desk. This took about 45 minutes, which left me 15 minutes for sketching before I had to stop and take care of boring stuff like laundry and cleaning.** I could have just shoved all the crap out of the way and got on with what I was supposed to do but I'm glad I didn't, because now I have a well sorted workroom, and when I allocate an hour to work on things I know that I can just sit down and start working.

So tell me, dear readers, how does procrastination manifest itself in your day to day doings, and what do you do with it! Or are you proof of my theory that there are, in fact, people who don't have this problem? (In which case, TEACH ME YOUR SECRETS!!)

*Time management: that's a whole blog post in itself...
** don't worry, the irony is not lost on me.

Progress - It Happens!

Believe me, I'm rather shocked and more than a little proud that I actually have been chipping away at the projects that I've set myself!

Part 1: The Rug.

We took these (old worn out Jeans kindly donated by friends and family!) and ripped them into strips....

This is a small sample here.... then we pick three and begin to braid and braid and braid....

I used my sewing machine to weigh it down, which was handy because whenever I ran out of one strand I would pick another one and sew it on. So it grew and grew until we have....

So now I have enough done to make a decent sized rug, but I still have to stitch it together - and you thought the braiding was the tedious part!

So that's the story with the rug! Almost done! <3 

Part 2: Paper Doll! 

This requires far more prototyping and experimentation that I thought it would initially. I really like the idea of dispensing with annoying paper tabs (always tearing!) and replacing them with MAGNETS - this poses a few issues with polarity and what not, so I'm playing with different ideas while I draw outfits on my doll!

There are a few design issues as well, (the hair style shown has been modified since discovering the difficulty involved in cutting out individual strands of hair!) Emily is also helping me come up with outfits for "the lady" so when it's all said and done it will be well and truly kid tested!

So that is it! I feel pretty good for getting this much done in between the school run, domestic goddessery, Roller Derby training, the occasional graphic design work and my constant battle with General Lethargy... oh no, I'm going to have to draw Lethargy in uniform now aren't I?

Love to you all, 

xx

Getting Stuff Done

Well that is the plan, at any rate. I hit a bit of a slump in the old productivity over the past few months, but with a few changes in place (the elder child starting school, the younger child having daycare for a couple of days a week and Himself going to college) I should have some time aaall to myself. And it is in this time that I shall Get Stuff Done.*

The first thing that is getting done, house work and other pressing matters aside, are paper dolls. When I was a smaller person I loved paper dolls, we had several sets and there was something special about them that you just couldn't get with an actual doll... who knows, maybe it was an early sign of my future "pretty things on paper" fetish which has manifested itself over the past few years! So it's something that I wanted to share with my kids. I have the base doll drawn up, and all I have to do now is give her some clothes...

Second on the list is to make a Rug. I have two collections on the go at the moment, one of old t-shirts and one of old jeans. Both are destined to become rugs. We shall see if they are worthy of being shown to the world.

So now that I've blogged about doing these things, I am obliged to keep my promise to the internet (and you, dear readers) and, you know, actually DO them. Wish me luck!

*I know that serial capitalisation bothers some people, but I truly believe that some things have transcended mere noun-ness and deserve the hallmark of a Proper Noun. I beg your forgiveness for my little follies, they make me happy :)

Quick Update

Just to let you know that I've updated my website with some of the work that I've done over the past few months - Check it out Here.