A Day in the Life…

Sneaky peek behind the scenes

Hello it’s me! Rising up above weeks of busy worky times, to tell you a little bit about my creative week. I love a naughty peek behind the lives of the thing, the product, the artwork, don’t you? The human is what’s the most interesting thing about anything I buy or commission, watch or appreciate.

I know when I’m scrolling through Instagram of someone I’ve followed for a while, that I love to hear their voice and see their day to day. I don’t mind if it’s boring, because it’s the connection that’s interesting. So do you want to hear about my (sometimes) boring week?

Well I’m writing this letter to you anyway. You can scroll on by of course, but please don’t do that. I will try and make it interesting.

First of all, everything has slowed right down because I discovered a nigling pain in my arm that I largely ignored, got much worse and discovered it was tendinitis. Which if you haven’t had it, is really painful. I’m pretty sure it was from doing the gardening. I’d adopted a foolish habit of mowing the lawn with one arm while I held the cable in the other. Silly, foolish me. More importantly, it was not my bookbinding arm.

If you’ve been doing bookbinding for a while, you might’ve noticed you have one really strong arm. Am I right? It’s the cutting arm. And we all know the pain of cutting greyboard to the exact millimetre is an art form in itself. Well my other arm isn’t as strong and muscly as the bookbinding arm and now I’ve injured it and it makes everything really slow. Even though it’s not my most useful arm, I didn’t realise how much I need it to keep paper and board in position on the guillotine. Just pressing the guide down has caused the most excruciating pain.

But that hasn’t stopped me being a bookbinding machine this week! Today alone I prepped for making 14 new books for my shop. I can’t wait to show you the results. They are in the press.

I’m in the incredibly lucky position that whenever I make a batch of books they just sell out, even before I list them on my website. They either sell in the shop or I pop them on Instagram stories and poof they’re gone! So I’m always, always lagging behind on making a new batch. And dear bookbinders, you will know, how long they take to make. It’s usually a 3 day process, because of the pressing. I always start by making the book block in batches, then they get pressed. Then the covers get pressed. Then after casing in the block to its cover, it also gets pressed. It’s a beautiful slow process.

Some books I’m WiP making

Well this month I decided I needed to work in bigger batches and try and get lots of different books made so I can have them in my shop, as I want to offer small handmade gifts people can buy for their loved ones, that are under £30. If you’re new around here, my bricks and mortar shop currently is full of origami maps that I make to order. I also pack my internet orders from here which are mostly kits for bookbinding projects.

I really enjoy showing customers the projects from this membership that we’re making and the ones I’ve released on the website. However they want to buy my workshop models which I can’t sell because- well I need them for workshops. So it makes sense to make some limited runs of these books to sell to customers too. So this is a really long way to say, I’m busy making batches of books I’ve made on the courses. The first two structures are: Mini Chinese Thread Books and more of these map books using the Bradel binding method I released earlier this year. I’m totally addicted to this method. Plus I bought 50 metres of this bright pink bookcloth tape and I need to use it up!

Scroll Books

This month we are making scroll books in the club. Here’s a reminder of the tutorial. All tutorials are listed here. If you’re a paying member you can watch them at your own pace.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-166181464

I’ve also been teaching how to make the mini Chinese thread book at my local arts centre. It’s always a pleasure to teach this workshop. Take a look at these photos below.

Chinese thread book workshop

Don’t forget if you’re a paying member, the Chinese thread book online tutorial is free for you. It’s listed in the tutorials tab here.

Shop got a reorder

It’s really hard to tell from this image but I had a big sort out of my shop and moved things around and now I think I can run some small workshops here. I’m thinking maximum of 4 people to come and learn bookbinding in my shop. The white table will be replaced with a bigger workshop table and it will double up as a display unit when the shop is open for customers.

I much prefer teaching smaller groups, I can spend more time helping people and they will have access to all the papers and cloth and tools they need. Would you be interested in coming along?

My shop is in Hexham, let me know if you’re able to travel to me. I would love to meet you! I’ll have a think on about dates, but I’m thinking workshops will take place on a Friday starting in September.

Leave me a comment and let me know.

I’ll leave you on this rambly thinking out loud letter with some beautiful images shared on our bookbinding group. Don’t forget if you’re on Facebook you can join my group for free. Happy Wednesday!

Yvette