project #5: flower basket book

Project #5! I made this little baby out of stuff I just had at my house, some of it for years. I was digging through my craft closet that's now in my brother's room (it used to be mine before I went to college) and I found four little strawberry baskets. You know, the kind that strawberries come in at the store (or at least they used to. I think they all come in those clear plastic boxes now...). I cut one up so that instead of one box I now had 4 sides and a bottom all separate. I thought the sides looked like a little fence or a basket (which it was, so that makes sense) and that was my inspiration.

The flowers are made out of scrap fabric. The blue one is from fabric I had left over when I re-covered the chair in my room at school; the white was given to me by Janet Nelson—her daughter Emily was working for a woman at the time who designed and dyed fabric. They bought all the fabric white, but embroidered with thread made out of different material, then when they dyed them the fabric and the thread came out different colors, depending on what the each was made out of. It's a pretty cool idea, and one that I've been meaning to play with a little myself; the floral pattern was left over from when I made some cloth napkins out of a sheet I bought at a thrift store (and used for my DIY party); and the gray was from the sweatshirt lining of a jacket I got from my aunt and made into a skirt. The actual fabric flowers themselves were made from a great tutorial I found online and were going to be made into a garland for my DIY birthday party but it just didn't get around to being made. And thus the flower basket book was born!

I like the flowers because they make the cover really 3-D and substantial. The cover itself is made from a brown grocery bag which I folded over itself a couple times to make it thicker.

All the folds lead to two little pockets being formed in the front and back covers. If you look back at the first picture you can see that I included a little brass brad closing attachment on this one too so that nothing would fall out of the pockets and get lost.

The pages themselves are pretty uninteresting, again paper left over from a previous project. I think they were the trimmed off remnants from a larger book. I thought about using the flower stamp that I used in the last three books to stamp at least the first page, but decided against it. Sometimes blank pages are ok. Maybe the book would be good for a garden journal or something. You could keep little packets of seeds in the cover pockets and sketch ideas for flower bed lay-outs or write down things you learn about how to make your plants grow better. ❀

projects #2, 3, 4: remnant books

I made 3 books today! Thus projects #2, 3, 4 are born. These books were made completely out of materials I already had: the covers are made from paper bags, and the inside paper is all left over from other books I've made. There wasn't enough of any one kind of paper to make one full book, so I combined them all together and ended up having enough for 3 books! (So maybe I did have enough to make one with all the same paper after all...? But this is more fun.) The paper bag covers add a cool element because their openings form a pocket in the covers. Some of the pages are lined, some are unlined, and some are graph paper, so to kind of tie them all together I dug out some stamps that I've had for who knows how long and added a different stamp in the corner of every third page or so. I've been dying to use these stamps for something, anything, but this was the first project where I felt like they would really work well.

Here you can see the back cover of the white bag book. I unfolded and opened up the bottom of the bag, then folded it down to create a lip for the pocket so you can put things in it and they won't fall out. Also, the thread you see is attached onto the back cover with a little scrapbooking brass brad type thing and there is one on the front too so you can wind the thread around them to close the book securely.

This is a close up of one of the graph paper pages. The stamp here was a lovely gift from my favorite Jen-friend for my birthday last year (maybe Christmas?) based off of the short movie entitled "Validation" starring the amazingly curly-haired TJ Thyne. It's a little long (10 minutes) but it's worth watching, I promise! Do it.

Another page close up. If you look along the bottom of the page you can see the holes where it used to be bound into a spiral sketchbook. I bought this paper a long time ago and used it in a journal that I made for my dad when I first started bookbinding. It's a little thicker than what I would choose now, but it works great as the cover page for this book because the brown bag cover is a little fragile. The stamp I bought at Michael's for $1 or something and really like it a lot for some unexplainable reason.

I bought the "E" stamp on this page in one of my many east coast travels. I can't remember where I bought it exactly, but I do remember it was this amazing little print shop and they had a million stamps for sale and of course I wanted all of them but could only justify buying one, an "E" for Elton. Of course now I wish I had an entire alphabet of this lettering because I can think of a million and one things to do with it.

The back cover of one of the brown books. You can see how the bag forms a nifty little pocket. The stamp on the mirroring page was hand set by yours truly using this awesome stamp set my daddy bought me at Staples because he loves me. Also because it's awesome.

I discovered this stamp in my stamp box. I'm not sure where it came from. I think the mom bought it? The cool thing about it is that it sticks onto a clear block so that you can see exactly where you're putting the stamp AND if all the ink has come off the stamp itself. Despite its antiquated image, this is clearly the stamp of the future.

This is just a close up of the book spines so you can see the pamphlet stitch I did to sew them together. Also I liked how the books looked all stacked together... That is all.

Hooray for 31 Projects in May!

message in a bottle

It's been raining a lot here recently. Today Matt and I went on a walk in the rain to the Passaic River which is right by his house. We walked along a trail for a while, commented on how high the banks of the river had risen—it covered some of the path it was so high—and explored the nearby woods for a while. In our explorations we found 3 glass bottles that we decided were destined to be reused, so we took them back to Matt's house and, after picking up Garrett at the high school after some kind of audition or something, went back to Matt's house and wrote letters to people unknown to put in the bottles which we planned to then throw back into the river to be carried away to who knows where. Granted, probably not the most environmentally friendly thing to do, but definitely fun. Who hasn't wanted to write a real message in a bottle at least once in their lives?

My bottle was the green one, Garrett's was the clear one (we found it in the mud still partially full of vodka—sorry hobo man who maybe lives under the bridge, but it was for the greater good!), and Matt's was the brown one. Also the tallest. Here are the notes we wrote, in the same order as above:

To: You.
Subj: Message in a bottle

This bottle was found on the banks of the Passaic River in Summit, NJ. Who knows how far it has already traveled in its journey to get to me, or how much further it will go before you find it. Perhaps the swollen river will carry it far out to sea where it will be lost among the waves and sea weed and never be read by human eyes, but instead eaten by a hungry sea creature where it will stay in its digestive system until its untimely death. Whatever its fate, I hope that by the time it reaches you, gentle reader, its life will have been a full one.

***

This is a message to any courageous adventurers who braved the elements to procure this message in a bottle. I have a tale to spin as long as a spider's web. This tale is of a young shrub named Larry. Larry loved to rock out on his Gibson his mom got for him, but all was for naught when he learned that his mother was eaten by flesh-eating monsters called zombies. Devastated by his realization about his mother's death he set out on a mission of glory and fame, but most of all, revenge on the zombies that killed his lovely mother. Using all of his powers of rock he is out there somewhere slaying zombies until his last chord.
*If you are a zombie you have been warned.

***

To Whom so ever comes upon this message,

Congratulations!

By doing a good deed, picking up litter, you have gained access to a secret. Passed down from generation to generation, only transmitted by mystical brown bottle, it is none other than the secret of all life. By gaining access to this secret you will become one of the twenty chosen of the sect of the wise, charged with guarding the wisdom of humanity for the rest of your life.

By the very fact that you found this bottle I know that you were predestined to discover this, and therefore I know that the wisdom is already within you. Nothing more needs to be said. Trust yourself, and go in peace.

***

We rolled the papers up and wrapped them in plastic wrap (to protect them from getting wet), then tied them with minty dental floss, stuck some corks in the tops of the bottles, and headed out. The three of us marched down the street, now in the growing darkness, and hiked down to the banks of the river, Matt and I for the second time that day, Garrett for the first. We each said a few profound words that I've forgotten now, and tossed our bottles into the rapidly running river, with only our hopes of them finding another soul to guide them.

On our way back to the house Matt said, "I really hope that like a ten year old kid finds mine. I bet it would make his week." We all nodded.

people climbing up, water falling down

Today we went on a hike up to a waterfall. I almost died because the air was so thin. False, but it did remind me a lot of hiking the Y my first weekend in Provo and not realizing that when you are up in the mountains as opposed to at sea level it makes it really hard to breathe.

The waterfall was up really high. It took us about 2 hours to hike up the mountain to the first waterfall. Some of the trail was almost vertical and we had to use tree roots and branches to pull ourselves up. It was awesome.

Along the way we ran across a field of cows.

Also a drinking trough for the cows made out a recycled tire and filled with water pumped from the waterfall up above. Uhm, yes.

Once we got to the waterfall I discovered my initials already carved into a rock there. Clearly someone in Ecuador is not-so-secretly in love with me.

While we were up at the waterfall it began to rain. This made the hike down a bit slippery and muddy (though I slipped a lot I did not ever fall—unlike some others I know. Bonus points for Cassi! Reminded me a little of our zip lining adventure, though not as muddy). These shoes used to be white.

After the first waterfall we hiked back down to the house where we had lunch, then hiked up to a second, smaller, closer waterfall and jumped off a rock into the freezing cold water. The rock was not very high at all, probably only 6 feet above the water, but I was afraid to jump. But I did. And scraped my foot on the rocks below because I didn't jump out far enough. This is my splash.