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'Off' Work but not off duty

April 5th, 2013 at 02:57 pm

What did you do on your spring break? Four days 'off' work but not off family stuff! BORING READING ALERT: The past few days were the once a year time I take care of the kitchen/dining/den tile floor. Y'know we put that tile in ourselves!! Ok, ok, maybe it was 15 years ago, but I must have that picture in my mind of it brand new. Nah, it is the frugalista in me that appreciates BRAND NEW stuff and wants to keep it like that forever (almost). It's a cream color, but you guessed it, the grout is no longer cream. More like MUD COLORED, especially in the high traffic area. I don the junk clothes, and get the gallon of bleach and rubber gloves. AND it's nice and nearly cream colored again. At least for a week....


FUN READING ALERT: After another couple days of taking kid's to appointments, I MADE a block of time to devote to my small business. Each of these 3 things I wanted to work on needed a good block of 2~4 hours-

a. Hand bind books
b. Learn to make wire prong settings
c. Make fabric covered fancy keepsake boxes

I only had time for one. I knew the prong setting would take some weeks/months to get good at and I decided to let that one go for now. The boxes looked like great fun, but a pretty big time commitment.

So I picked 'a' because I had a box of high quality linen content paper that has been awaiting book making for a year or so. Also, I had gotten the "BookWorks" book from paperback swap a few weeks ago which has instructions for many kinds of journal binding.

Here is the step making the 'signatures' - those are folded sets that are sewn together, then stacked and sewed/glued at the spine to make a book. Just making the signatures took the couple hour block I had:


Signatures for bookmaking-there will be 8 books

Making and attaching the cover is a whole separate step which is reserved for another time block of hours!

Keeping the momentum, I decided to make booklets with the heavy scrapbook pages in my supplies that were originally bought for that purpose (over a year ago!).

Booklets are fast and easy, just using 1 'signature'. You sew the cover right along with the signature.

I also have been given lots of trims lately, not to mention the stock of accents I have already. So here's how I put them to work:

HAND SEWN BOOKLETS

Vintage Beauty
Features lace doily and velvet trim, beaded tail binding


Daisy Days
Features beaded tail binding and fiber flowers


Travel Pop
Features fabric wheels and sheer red ribbon spine


Inside View
All booklets are 6" x 6" with 20 unlined pages, 30% recycled content paper Forest Stewardship Certified (sustainable practice)


The booklets are destined for summer shows and shops, and retail for $10 ea.

Lots of other stories to come! Watch for 'How Do they STAY in Business?!' and other spring break sound bites from The Frugal Artisan.

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