do-over!!

well, i guess i'm not too surprised - there is definitely a shelf life for the leather part of the fabu-leather. my poor little journal didn't survive too many days of being toted around in my purse.

so i snuck out of work long enough to hit the local craft store last week, and bought a 12x12 piece of suede. cut the threads from the old journal, trimmed the suede down, and viola! - a new journal cover. a smidge less coverage on the wrap than the first one, but with the added benefit of that yummy suede smell. and i managed to re-bind the whole thing without tearing any of the pages! here are a few shots of the new and vastly improved cover:

should have just done the "suede from the craft store" thing from the start . . . ;-)

back to binding

long-stitch journal

eeep - i made a journal! i've bound pages before, for journal inserts (into commercially made leather covers), but this is the first time i've done longstitch into a cover i made. i didn't have any leather (and wasn't patient enough to wait until i could buy some), so i used an old piece of fabu-leather that i bought many many years ago for a purse to make a faux leather cover.

note to self: fabu-leather has a shelf-life! i couldn't make the closure/wrap band out of it because the fake leather part disintegrated when i stretched it (i hate to think what a skirt made out of this stuff several years ago must look like now - yeeks!).

but i'm pretty proud of how this one turned out - i used a variety of papers for the pages, and added a braided waxed linen wrap (with a cool stamped wooden coin i got in a swap many years ago - my apologies to the artist because i don't remember who it's from). i just hope the damn cover lasts long enough!

My first post

well, here it is, my foray into blog-dom. we'll see how long i keep it up . . .

looking forward to the upcoming weekend, planning a visit to my friend at the hospital, hoping to get some artwork done as well. i was able to complete some items last weekend for the snagging stampers "handmade hoopla" contest - hopefully i'll find some nice things to snag.

this blog needs a lot of work - graphics, artwork, a nicer layout . . . but at least it's a start!