Well, I've gone and opened a second book shop. Yep. I did. I've been a member of Handmade Artist's Forum for a little while now and just recently they have revamped their Handmade Artist's Shop. I have been toying with the idea to open one up there, I mean really, for $5 a month, unlimited listings, they never expire, and you fork over ZERO commission to them when you sell something. I started really thinking seriously when every month my Etsy bill keeps getting higher and higher, I'll be keeping my Etsy shop but listing the same books in my HAFshop simultaneously. It's still new as I said, and not real well known but this husband wife team of artisans that run it really have their hearts in the right place - HANDMADE ONLY and they don't have their hands in the pockets of the artists trying to make a go of it, every time you list a new item it automatically gets tweeted to potentially over 100,000 of their followers on twitter. I'm waging a personal war trying to get my photos to look decent on there but I'm slowly figuring it out....and I've sold two books since I've opened a couple days ago which is promising!
On to one of my newest books I finished, I had a custom order request from a good friend that had a nephew graduating college, we decided on a guitar themed fabric. I coptic bound it and added a leather tie...but how to actually keep it shut was my challenge, I tried to order a metal guitar pick charm but my vendor didn't come through for me (that's another story probably best left untold)so I thought a wooden peg of some sort would be neat. A stick? Dowel? Something made of polymer clay? I decided to rummage through the garage to see what I could come up with...I spotted a paint stir stick, hmmm....perfect thickness, easy enough to whittle to the shape I want so I took it to my work table with Xacto knife in hand and proceeded to whittle and sand away, got it nice and smooth, stained it with a nice yellow alcohol ink and coated it with a polycrylic. It worked out nicely I think!
The above photo on another of my newer books I tied the exposed threads a little differently. I really prefer straight stitched bindings, they really allow for the book to lie nicely open and you don't have the "gutter" to fight when writing or drawing inside.
You ever see the movie Benny and Joon? It's one of my all time favorites - this song was in that movie.
You see time, time is our friend..........at the Shores
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