Craft Fairs, I'm Back!

After a little over a year off, in which I focused on teaching and job transitioning, I rejoined the craft fair game with San Francisco Center for the Book's annual Holiday Fair this past December (yes, yes, I am super late getting these images posted, don't hate me!). 

Since I no longer have a car, I have to rely on public transit (AC Transit, BART, and Muni here in the Bay Area) to schlep all my stuff to and fro. While it's obviously not ideal, I never back down from a challenge and one's display can always use improvement. 

Traveling on public transit also meant that I had to re-assess just how much I took both in terms of product quantity, and display materials. The card holders were a must but everything else I was bringing from items to sell to my tablecloth and 'Santa's cookies' all had to fit in a single rolling suitcase. This meant playing more with surface level display as opposed to building up with stands and supports.  

Instead of having back-up product stashed below the table, I actually used it to stack items on top of themselves within the table display to give a leveled/layered appearance. Finding a balance between looking professional and putting my products' best feet forward while maintaining a fun, slightly chaotic feel was a challenge with this set-up and I can definitely perfect what I've done for future set-ups. I do think this style adds to the 'garage sale' nature of my booth design which, with handmade chalk board price tags (made on playing cards this time), table cloth, etc, has been my aim for the most recent shows I've participated in. 

I found the show to be a lot of fun, and also a great success. Of course, a lot of this can be attributed to the lovely attendees to the event, but I'd like to think my display and design contributed to my success, at least a bit.

While I'm 'back in the game', I am still new to the art and craft world and the craft fair world. I don't as of yet have anything else booked for 2015 but don't worry, you can bet there will be more and more chances for you to see my work in person (and say hi!) in the future instead of being restricted only to my Etsy shop. 

Letterpress Gift Tags

Earlier this week I got to spend a day in the letterpress studio at the San Francisco Center for the Book teaching my first ever letterpress workshop--Letterpress Gift Tags.

The workshop was an awesome 3 hours of printing gift tags on tabletop platen presses. 

We began with learning to set lead type and basic press operation. Then we got right down to business with printing.

 Happy Winter was my design. The typeface kinda reminds me of a beer label...

 This one was a warm up for the students at they learned to work the press

How could we make holiday tags without naughty/nice ones?

Class ended with rounding corners, punching holes and adding string, so the tags could be attached to gifts.

Bookmaking with Karen Hanmer

Three book blocks, waiting to be finished

Last weekend I was lucky enough to take two bookmaking workshops with book artist Karen Hanmer, who was visiting the San Francisco Center for the Book from Chicago. Not only is Karen a great instructor and book artist, she's also funny and loves Star Trek and who doesn't love someone that can compare binding to Star Trek?

Drum leaf binding

Link stitch binding with sewn on boards

In the first workshop we made three books: a drum leaf binding, which requires no sewing, and two link stitched books with sewn boards. We also got to learn and experiment with edge decorating.

In the second workshop we learned the pyramid book structure, which is just amazing. It can be viewed page by page like a 'normal' book, or flat (it's double sided), or it can be stood up in a number of different ways to be viewed in a more sculptural manner. 

A pyramid book starts with a triangle

After my practice book, I decided to make a pyramid book out of wrapping paper with skeletons on one side and a map of the world on the other. I didn't cut all my paper at the right angle so the pages on this book don't line up perfectly but, it's just the first one of many pyramid books I'll be making in the future.

New Books from Class

I'm on vacation this week so my posting has been a little slow. Before I left though, I was the TA for Courtney Cerruti's Introduction to Bookbinding class and then, she was my TA for another session of the same workshop. Here are photos from our day of tag-team teaching.

Here's Courtney, being an awesome teacher, as usual

Courtney had us use vintage posters for one book--great idea!

One of Courtney's accordion books

My students working

Student work from my class

Class Photos

The messy pile of demo books I made while teaching

This past Tuesday I taught my third session of Introduction to Bookbinding. I love teaching this workshop; I get to go over all the basics of binding tools and simple structures and I get to make everyone excited about bookmaking, which isn't hard since it's one of my most favorite things to do. 

There's not much time for picture taking when you're teaching this class but below are a few images I was able to snap throughout the evening.

The bindery, all ready and awaiting the students

Some student books, on top of my hand illustrated hand-out

More student work. This gal was taking very nice photos of each book as she made them, hence the orderly line up.

Packed and ready to head home. You know it was a good class when you are leaving with less supplies that you arrived with--that means you made a lot of books!

Intermediate Bookbinding: Week 7

With only three classes left, there was no time to be sad this week because there was so much work to be done on our books.

First we had to measure and mark where we would put glue (PVA) on our end sheets since this time they needed to be tipped on instead of sewn on. We set our dividers to 5mm and tried to be as precise as possible. 

Then we added super (starched muslin) and layered paper as spine liner. My book just didn't want to hold it's finger rounded shape so I did the gluing in a laying press to try to help my book keeps it's shape.

Then a step that seems the same no matter what the book structure: weave the cords through the super then trim them back so everything is even.

After cutting our cover boards, it was time to cut the leather for the cover down to size and start paring the edges. One of my classmates said this green/grey leather looked like a car seat but, I think it's pretty sexy, or at least it will be, once it covers some Shakespeare.

After one unsuccessfully pared edge, I was sent back to practice edge paring on some scrap leather.

 My finger had a minor run-in with the tip of my knife (really just a prick but I didn't want to get blood on my precious leather).

But, practice makes kind of perfect. Soon I was back to the real leather and I managed a few feathers (that photo up there isn't in focus but that's a feather, I swear!).

By the end of class, I had a piece of leather that was ready for a paring machine.