My First Handmade Book

I am so proud of myself!!! I made my first book today! It's not really big, covers measure 10 x 12 cm and inside pages 10 x 9 cm and it has 24 pages in 4 different colors.

While surfing the web I came accross pics of handmade books and booklest and I just loved them. Today I watched the video on Craft TV Weekly where the demonstrator shows how to prepare back and front cover and put them together, how to stitch pages,... Since I had time I thought I would give it a try. Measuring and cutting paper was quite time consuming as I don't have any special cutters except blade, ruler and measuring plate. The hardest part was cutting the hard cardboard I used for covers, my hands still hurt! Making holes was much easier as I imagined and so was stitching. I wanted to make a coptic stitches at first, but then I figured out it would probably be safer to start with a stitch from that video. I didn't stitch too tightly, I am going to put different pictures and embelishments on the pages later so they will fill the inside of the covers, I guess. Oh, and the center inside part where pages are attached to the cover - that's my idea! I didn't want just glue the last page of the inside papers to the cover, I think this solution is much better. Almost like a real book! :)

It was so good to see how well things are fitting together and that in a few hours of work few ordinary pieces of paper turned into a book! Hmmm, maybe I should quit work and start making books! :))

And of course, here are few pics of you my masterpiece :)!

Cardmaking continues

It seems I got into cardmaking lately. It's probably because I should make beads for a swap and I just can't make the right combination. I guess it's about time I make them... maybe I'll just make another card before I start. :)
Since it is time for Christmas cards I am trying to make something more in that spirit. I have quite some stamps, but of course no stamps with Christmas themes. I just have this Santa, which is rather cute and it will have to do, and a swirly tree which I've used just for stamping on clay so far. My brother just came from New York, I was hoping he is going to get me stamps and punches and some other stuff I wanted... but he couldn't find any craft store there. Oh well, by next year I will have more Christmas stamps and papers, I am sure.

Santa Claus Fest

Sounds interesting!
I hope I have time to do something for this contest, I really like the idea. I should be working on cards and gifts and decorations, but days are passing by so quickly that I don't have much time for such things. Unfortunatelly. It's time to organise my life a bit better. It's weird. I mean, days still have 24 hours - that's the same as years ago. And few years ago I was much more effective as I am now. I had another job and my working time was 2 hours shorter as it is now. And Nina was going to sleep at 7pm while now she is up until 9.30pm usually. Yep, that could be the reason...

Cardmaking

I got few 6x6 BasicGrey paper pads today and I couldn't resist - I just had to try them!

Latest Pendants

This is fun! No more nervous breakdowns because of the pics here on blogger. I don't know for others but I always had problems with loading and then arranging more pics at once. They were all around the site and every time it took me quite some time and patience to put them in order. And then I look at my site on my work computer and pics are not lined up! Now that's over, I'll use Slide more often. Anyway, here are some of my latest pendants... as usually, I gave some away before I could even took pics.