I love making books

This book was made at about the same time as that in 'Scraps of brown Paper'.
I had bought a notebook with a plastic cover to keep craft notes but the cover annoyed me and the corner broke off so I decided to make it more personnal and good to handle.
I cut and covered a large cardboard envelope to make a new cover for the notebook and then used a 3D card envelope/package that had been used to send me a book.
I brayered ink from a 'rainbow' ink pad onto pieces of brown paper that were to cover the cardboard glued them onto and around the cardboard. I added a card 'pocket' to the inside back of the cover so that the back cover of the notebook could be slotted in. This means that the outside cover, should it wear well, can be used again when the notebook is full.

I decorated the notebook and cover with my favourite wild flower rubber stamps from Graphicus. Today, I added butterflies to the decoration in 'honour' of the butterfly count sponsored by Marks and Spencer. www.bigbutterflycount.com
At the moment only cabbage white butterflies are visiting my garden and other years we have seen peacocks and tortoiseshells. I think that next year I will rear some from Worldwide Butterflies and hope to help increase the population.

I dyed some more wool roving yesterday. This time it was superwash merino and I made an effort to use new colour combinations.
Now, I have to think of interesting, exotic and decriptive names for the colourways with the hope that someone will be enticed into paying money for them!!! Any suggestions?

Scraps of brown paper

I use brown paper to separate the layers when I wind a warp onto my loom. After a time it becomes torn and distressed, waste material as far as a weaver is concerned, but, for a paper crafter a useful resource. The distressed look is good, has charm and character and can be a useful way to recyle 'materials'.
Since childhood I have been interested in making books and now because of my interest in card making using rubber stamps, embossing powder and all manner of colouring mediums, I have started to make spiral bound notebooks, shopping list booklets and all manner of books in which to record my craft notes/processes etc.
The pictures here are one of my latest 'creations'. I love red and I am always very pleased to see fields full of red poppies at this time of year. This inspired my to make the 'Poppy notebook cover'.
The cover is made from recycled boxes, which once held such things as photo paper and printable labels or a book ordered on the web, covered with brown paper and decorated with a rubber stamps on the poppy theme, hitherto unused. The fastening is two recycled leather buttons with a silk twisted cord.



This was designed as a recording/planning book for another weaver who also likes red. Some of the notebook pages are for inspirational sketches, others for weave draft planning and some for project notes. It is removable and can be replaced in the future by a bought shorthand notebook.