Re: cycled Book.

The start of another work week. It's going by pretty fast though. I'm counting down the days to February 14th when I get to fly home! I love so many things about DC, but it's still not home. I was so excited to leave and find new places; I didn't think I'd miss Florida that much. I knew I'd miss the people, but I didn't realize that I'd actually miss the sunshine and warm weather, I4, the Island, Seasons 52 (ok, I knew I'd miss that one), the bells on the clock tower, and just the general pace of things.

Anyway, the cold weather this weekend gave me a great excuse to stay in and make stuff.

I think I've already posted up most of my projects, but this one is a book I made. One of my only attempts at bookmaking. I used old paper from the office set for recycling.

I folded them all in half (hamburger style, not hotdog) so that the text was on the inside and tore them off at about 5 1/2". You can make it any size or shape, I just went for a simple square. I lined up all of the creases one one side, and then clamped together the opposite end. Then I slathered on a few layers of Elmers for my quickie-binding. It takes about 20 minutes or so for each layer to dry if you really douse it in glue.

For the cover I used plastic bags. I used a fun patterned one from World Market for the outside and a plain brown Publix for the inside. I folded each bag in half (hamburger) so that it was a pretty large piece in the end. You can also fold it in quarters (hotdog, hotdog) and make strips from it. Anyway, I didn't need this to be too thick, so I put the halved bags on top of eachother between two sheets of vellum (you can use wax paper or parchment as well, but I find it sticks to the plastic) and ironed. The iron has to be on the highest setting for this to work well. I just move the iron around constantly until you can start to see the plastic through the vellum - then you know it's melting.

Because I only had essentially 4 layers of plastic, some of it crinkles up under the heat creating little holes in the plastic. If you have more layers it won't get holey.

Ta-da!

It's surprisingly durable.










A Tangled Skein was having a sale in honor of their 1 year birthday, so Emily and I had to go stock up. I was on relatively good behavior, but did make it out with these 4 beautiful green skeins of merino wool and silk to make a scarf for Gregory; as well as 2 more skeins of the lavender yarn so I have enough to make myself a top.


Tonight I'm off to Adega for the SSK circle.