New Quote Journals

I designed a few new leather journals with quotes this week for my Etsy store. It's always fun to dig through my collection of quotes and clip art, plus the Oxford Dictionary of Quotes, and the Riverside Shakespeare, and ok, it's an excuse to sit and leaf through some of my favourite novels, too. I'm a sucker for those fat Victorian novels. There's nothing like spending an evening drinking tea and reading about the romantic and other entanglements of men with stiff collars and women in enormous dresses.

Speaking of which, one of my new designs is a Reader's Journal (pictured below), for people who share my addiction to books. It has a photo of a Victorian woman (in the aforementioned sort of dress) reading a book, along with a quote by Louise May Alcott:

"She is too fond of books,
and it has turned her brain."

That quote always makes me laugh, probably because it describes me too well....

I made another leather journal with a lovely poem by e e cummings:

"Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"

And a nature journal with a quote by John Muir:



And finally, a journal with a quote by Leonardo da Vinci ("The smallest feline is a masterpiece"), plus his sketch (not the original, alas) of a sleeping cat:

Little leather notebooks

I've been busy making lots of small leather notebooks for the local art gallery shop and for my Etsy store. I have a stash of really beautiful thin, shiny goatskin that seemed a bit too modern for my medieval style journals, and it's been sitting on the shelf, waiting patiently for me to grind through a few gears and figure out what to do with it.

I've been wanting to make some more smaller books (there's something really compelling about small book--I'm not quite sure why, but I just love little books.). So I came up with a pocket sized design that is traditional, but the stitching is simple and modern looking. The stitching pattern on the spine is sort of based on something called the "icicle stitch" in one of Keith Smith's books. You might call it a modified icicle. Or maybe slightly melted.

Moon Bindery, Here and There

Some excellent news this week--I entered one of my books (pictured above) in a book design competition held by The Bonefolder (a e-journal for bookbinders and book artists), and it was one of 25 books selected to be part of an online exhibition featured in the Fall, 2009 issue of The Bonefolder. If you'd like to see all the selected books, the fall issue is free and online now--You can find it here. The exhibition is called the Bind-O-Rama (page 54) .

Also, the Style Collective blog has kindly done a nice writeup about my books:

http://www.stylecollective.com.au/livingstyle.asp?idcontent=491

Ok, I'd better get back to work... :)