Now for the next marketing push

With the word out about A Tango Diary, I'm on to the next projects: Super Colossal Crafty Wonderland on Dec. 13 and, before that, the Artspace at TaborSpace show, for which I've finished ONE piece.

Better stop posting and get cracking.

Where have you been all my bookbinding life?

I swear, sometimes what keeps me from bouts of bookbinding is the long, painful cleanup at the end, in particular washing the PVA and paste out of my brush. I feel like I'm draining the Bull Run watershed trying to get all those little white elastic bits out of the bristles.

On a lark I stopped in at my neighborhood hardware store and lo, the brush comb! What a difference a tool can make. I whip this thing out and my brush is clean in about 10 percent of the time it used to take. I have so much extra time I can post to my blog!

In a pinch, I bet you could even fix your hair with it but. very. carefully.

Finish work takes forever

I should have finished A Tango Diary weeks ago, but I always forget: The real work of bookbinding seems to come at the back end. It's not like, say, painting a room, where prepwork accounts for the bulk of the task. Oh no. Once you've printed, collated, and sewn the signature, then bound the thing, you have to put on the covers (careful now), knock up nice rounded-but-square corners (all four of them) and paste in endpapers (I made this extra-worky by putting in pockets; tell me, what books have pockets these days?).

All that takes about 35 more minutes per copy if I'm plugging along. It starts to seem like bookbinding's all about covering your tracks. Rough edges are trimmed and tucked away. Marked-up bookboard gets covered up completely and quickly like Mormon underwear. There are parts of the book the reader never sees. With A Tango Diary, it cracks me up that the pockets are lined, and I wonder if anyone will notice that flash of buff-colored Japanese paper as they slide in a business card.

But wait, we're still not done. I then stamp the colophon with my Chinese chop, and number the edition. Somewhere in here I should start the marketing, too. Speaking of, here's the suite of promo pix.

Crafty Wonderland here we come

Out of 400 entrants, I'm one of 200 vendors picked to show my stuff at the so-called Super Colossal Crafty Wonderland holiday sale happening Sunday, Dec. 13, at the Oregon Convention Center. Yippee! I'm sharing a table with the fabulous jewelry designer Angela Muldoon; we met at the Blackbird sale last year.

Along with another Beaumont Artspace show coming up in December at TaborSpace, and a few other deadlines looming, I've got plenty of irons in the fire. I'm also only about a third of the way through A Tango Diary. The marketing blitz for that should begin first part of November.

Lately it seems like the bindery's humming with activity. We are entering the third month of the roof-repair project, but best of all (so far) are the new shelves by our rockin' cabinet man.

They're already useful.

Just in time for TangoFest

The Tango Diary's been bound for at least a month now, but now it has covers and can be released to the world! I hope to get it to the festival this weekend, then launch an online marketing blitz.

What's cooler than an iPhone? The box it comes in

My husband bought an iPhone, and I got the box. Covered in Japanese chiyogami, it becomes an exquisite place to store stuff.



Will I get in trouble with Apple for putting my seal on the bottom?

Let's put some well wishes in it

Congratulations to the soon-to-be newlyweds!

Our cousin and her fiancé are getting married next month, and here's the party album I made. I hadn't seen this chiyogami pattern before, but it totally suits the couple and the style of the event — a fun and casual afternoon and evening in the park.


Here's some double deckle-action detail (bookbinder's tongue-twister)