Erinzam News

This is a great little book project to use up card stock weight paper scraps. As I accumulated my own collection of postcards, Print Gocco project leftovers, business cards and other various papers, I came up with this idea to turn them into something wonderful! I have been in need of a little “flash card” style book for memorizing Bible verses and foreign language words (I’m attempting to learn Swedish) and this little book fit the bill. I have a selection of these little books available for purchase on Etsy, and am also including basic instructions below for you to make your own, if you like.

Materials and Tools:

leftover book cover

miscellaneous card stock weight papers

cutting mat

metal ruler

box cutter (heavy-duty knife) and/or x-acto knife

hole punch

hammer

1. The first step is to cut your pages to size using the metal ruler and x-acto knife. I chose to make my pages the size of a business card (2″ x 3 1/2″). I suggest about 50 pages per book if you are using a 1″ book ring.

2. Use the heavy-duty knife and metal ruler to cut your front and back covers. The height of the covers will the be same as the inside pages, but the right edge should extend about 1/8″ beyond the pages. So, my cover is 2″ x 3 5/8″.

3. Create a template by punching a hole in the upper left corner of an extra page, about 1/4″ from the top and 1/4″ from the left side. Use this template to help you punch your holes in the same spot for the rest of the pages. You can use either a hand held hole punch or a hammer and punch for this step.

4. Use the page template for placing a hole in the covers as well. I suggest using a hammer and punch on a cutting mat for this step.

5. Thread the covers and pages onto the metal book ring, and voilá! You’re done!

This is a recent project that I created for a friend who is a designer and artist. The cover is upcycled from a discarded children’s encyclopedia and the straps from a secondhand belt. The pages are sewn onto straps for the binding. I always find this binding to be a bit of a challenge, but it looks great when finished. I made sure to fill it with plenty of goodies… papers selected from old books, papers I printed myself, envelopes and a variety of other papers.

Here are a few ‘behind the scenes’ images of the creation of this book:

This past weekend Ben and I set up our very first booth with our wares at a local festival. We researched and prepared ourselves as much as we could, and the results were great! We had a fantastic time, met many wonderful people and even sold a few items. At the bottom of this post I am including a few of the things that worked best for us. Thanks to everyone who made it out to see us! We hope to see you again next year!

We were on a tight budget, so we bought very few new things and were creative with what we had around our apartment for our displays:

1.We found a set of hinged closet doors by an alley dumpster, which we painted gray and used to display our original art and framed prints.

2. To display giclée prints and drawings, we strung a clothesline and hung a selection of prepackaged prints with bulldog clips. After thinking way too hard about a way to display prints standing up on the table, we discovered a few boards that we had in the garage and assembled them together to make a trough. We painted it to match the large back panels. We used inexpensive office wire baskets to hold multiple prints in front of the standing display.

3. To display smaller collages, we used a vintage file box that we already had.

4. We found a collection of small wood boxes at Goodwill, which were perfect for displaying books and postcard sets.

5. Ben and I discovered a free business card promotion through our favorite green printer at greenerprinter.com and were able to order professionally printed business cards for the event. I designed mine to double as a blank tag, which we used as price labels for all of our items.

6. For a tablecloth, I hemmed a huge piece of cotton canvas, which we can always cut apart to stretch for new paintings later!

7. I painted a colorful canvas banner to hang on the front of the table, which we now proudly display in our studio.

These are some other tips that we discovered during our research that really worked for us:

1. Accepting credit cards is a very good idea! We purchased a knucklebuster (the thing that slides over a card to make a carbon copy receipt) and used ProPay over the internet to run the numbers. We were fortunate enough to have internet service at the park, so we could run the cards right then and there on Ben’s laptop.

2. The festival was “zero waste” and forbid plastic shopping bags. I discovered a great selection of sustainable bamboo and 100% recycled paper gift bags, as well as recycled content tissue papers at Dunwoody Booth Packaging. These worked great to pack up framed artwork and books. Since we already had them, I used large manila envelopes as flat bags for the prints.

3. Free chocolates make people happy! (including myself)

4. Visible pricing is important.

5. We found that displaying a framed version of a print helps people envision what their print could look like. Also, some people prefer to purchase a framed print to save them the trouble of having it done themselves. We did our own framing and ordered our framing supplies from American Frame.

6. People (including kids) will manhandle your products. Good thing we didn’t have any delicate items! Each of our prints was prepackaged in a clear bag to prevent sticky fingers from ruining them. We ordered our bags at clearbags.com.

We had such a good time and hope to do this again, so if you have any other ideas or tips, please add them! We’ll give them a try next time.

I’ve been working on a selection of earth-friendly goodies lately. In order to reduce my large collection of paper, linen thread and book cover scraps left over from other projects, I created a new group of “Recycle Bin Books”. Each one is completely different. They make me think of little patchwork quilts. A few are currently available for sale on Etsy, with more to be posted throughout May.

Another attempt at recycling studio scraps culminated in a series of mini collages. I had several screen printed tags left over from a previous project and thought long and hard about how to recycle them without actually dumping them in the recycle bin. This project turned out to be extremely healthy for me, as I wasn’t concerned about how they turned out. I just went for it and had a great time cutting, gluing, drawing and writing little phrases. Of course, some of them turned out terrible, but others I like quite a bit. A selection of the better ones are posted online here.

Please feel free to post links to some of the eco-friendly projects that you are working on lately! I’m always interesed in new ideas and love to see what others are creating.

I’m multitasking! This time, several of the projects that I recently completed involved the wonderful Print Gocco. Once you start a print gocco project, it’s hard to stop making more and more!

Project number one is a new business card. Ben and I are both setting up a booth with our goods at a local festival in May (this is our first booth experience and we’re super excited!). Thanks to tax season, we have very few funds to dedicate to this venture, so we’re getting creative. For a new business card, I used sheets of acid free chip board. We already had stacks of these that we use to ship with our prints to keep them stiff. I decided to create a design that related to my books and drawings… like part of a page pulled from a sketchbook. I combined scans of my own handwriting and sketches with the font Cyclone (I promise I had no idea I was once again using a Hoefler & Frere-Jones font when I selected it!). I left space on the back to write in extra notes and information. My favorite part is the graphite color, which is a mix of black and silver inks. I like the little bird walking on the page line like a tightrope, too. The fun parts are done now! I do still have stacks of them to cut down to size, which isn’t quite so fun.

Projects number two and three are mini tag books. I really liked the vintage inventory tags that I previously used to make into little books, but my supply ran out. I decided to design my own, made to be filled out with information directly related to the content of the book. The little squirrel book was an idea that I just couldn’t resist. Ideas and sketches are the little nuts that you squirrel away into this book.

I must admit, this is the very first time that I have ever used one of my own books that I made! I have always used sketchbooks and journals that I received as gifts, etc. Sounds kind of weird, I know. I’ve been carrying around one of the little inventory books and so far I really like it. Right now I’m thinking of using one for the car to log gas and maintenance, one for recording my purchases, and of course one for sketches and ideas!

Both of these are currently available in my Etsy shop.

Oooh la la! I’m so happy with these new frames that arrived from American Frame. I chose a special one for each of these six new original paintings that will be available for purchase on Thursday and Friday.

I can smell the sweet smells of spring already! Here are a few sketches inspired by the pretty flowers popping up everywhere.

This is one in a series of six new paintings that I just completed. For the first time, these 6 in x 6 in panels combine my collection of discarded library books with acrylic paint and rub off lettering. I plan to post both the originals as well as prints of them on Etsy within the next two weeks. In the meantime I’m waiting for their frames to arrive. I’ll post an update once they’re up and available!

At the start of the year, a fellow Etsy artist requested a custom weekly planner/sketchbook for 2008. I struggled to begin until I chanced upon some great inspiration by designer and artist Amanda Hawkins. She created her very own organizer and planner pages, which are available for download from here. Amanda’s fantastic approach to her own planner helped me to finally overcome my artist’s block and inspired me to create something exciting. Forget DayMinder!

I designed a weekly calendar page, complete with a system for stamping in the dates and the phases of the moon. I printed these pages onto a substantial drawing paper and interspersed various sketch papers and envelopes between each week. My hope is for each week to present a surprise and inspiration to the owner. The cover is machine embroidered canvas covering book board. The snap closure allows for expansion as items are added to the envelopes throughout the year.

I like how this project turned out so much that I almost considered creating one for myself. After remembering how much time it took, I changed my mind. I think I’ll stick to my current system/mess of little pieces of paper and sticky notes for now.

Here they are! Earlier I mentioned a special project that I worked on in conjunction with the online shop, Three Potato Four. We came up with a set of three little books made from inventory tags. I screen printed numbers onto the covers with a Print Gocco, lined them with special papers and bound them using a pamphlet stitch. Each set is bundled in a little handmade muslin bag. I think these would be fun for grownups too!

Here are a few more cute items available through Three Potato Four’s brand new Kids section: