I love books. They are detrimental to my getting anything else done, ever.



I took a knackered sainsbury's bag, cut it into pieces, wrapped it round some old card from sketchbook covers... and learnt how to do coptic stitch. Thus a tatty mess of a recipe book was born.









aaand just because my binding is a mess but I still love it - <3



hope you like it, folks!

also, if anyone fancies offering me some easy/cheap vegetarian recipes I'd love to have 'em, I plan on filling this book with stuff I can exist on at university. already got a cupcake recipe I like (hah! the way to make friends I guess) but throw some others my way and you'll have big thanks from me and my dwindling funds.

thanks again!
& please let me know what you think of the book, of course
cassette.x

so i have a few ideas of how you did it, but i wanted to hear it from you...
how did you attach the paper-inside-book-part to the outside cover? i've only made books with covers that were thin enough to sew through so i'm curious how you dealt with that cover material that seems so thick

anyway, great job! totally inspiring- a project i can really get absorbed in :]

hey cestquinze

right well... I'm going to have to draw you some kind of rudimentary diagram, as I'm feeling inarticulate with words today... hope you can follow this...



here's the pages without the cover, basically when you're sewing it all up you need to make the first pages out of card or very thick paper so that the cover can sort of "hang" off it.



then this is just to show you what the cover and pages look like when they're not attached to eachother:



errrm and when you do glue, DO NOT GLUE THE SPINE!! it's curvy and flexible for a reason, so you can lay the book out flat



it's probably advisable where it says "apply pressure" to just stick two enormous books either side of the main chunk of pages, on top of the endpapers, and leave it to dry:



aaand then this is what it looks like sort of, from the top. notice that there's a gap between the curvy/flexible spine of the book and the back of the main chunk of pages. the whole lot kind of hangs off the endpapers which is why you need 'em to be super strong(!!):





hope that helped!!
if you need any more info just ask 

speak to you soon.
cassette,x

...I make cake.

...I photograph cake.

...soon, I eat cake.

but for now... 



Inspired by SesSpringett's first cupcakes (which are beautiful, by the way - as are your photographs of them!) & using this kids' recipe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/easypeasycupcakes_74799.shtml

...I got overly excited about baking. 
(this recipe was incredibly easy, too... want to make more for lunches etc.)



I made one batch according to the recipe, the rest I added a great deal of cocoa powder - I'm not ashamed!

Then, I improvised on the decorating bit - slapped on some vegan (!!) buttercream icing that I made, and sprinkled Green & Black's hot chocolate powder over the top.



Mmmm. I got mocked for photographing all of this, by the way. & here's a glimpse of the vegan chocolate cake(s) I made immediately afterwards. this took me a ridiculously short amount of time to do, & I'm absurdly happy about it.





Questions, comments & general enthusiasm for photographing baked goods would be greatly appreciated!

Hope you like the look of 'em! & be sure to let me know if you try out that recipe I linked to, it's so quick to do.

speak to you soon.
cassette.x

I made this for someone who I no longer need to give it to. although I kind of wish I had.

A tiny travel journal. for someone who's always roaming about the world.

This is about the most basic bookbinding thing ever and I seem to have half-invented it...

I got a pile of record cards (little pieces of thin, ruled card that I found second-hand somewhere, I'm assuming you can get them from stationery shops because they're very useful!) and cut out various pieces from one of my many photography books. (don't worry, I have second copies of most of them - don't ask me why!). Most of these photos are travel themed... well, parrots, chinese dragon sculptures, snow etc.

Then I holepunched them all along one edge, binding it with some sort of silky black cord. I tied it at the ends and put a fat little bead on there, just for laughs.

The cover is part of an old children's dictionary, I have a lot of them hanging around too, and I liked the text in relation to the travel theme.



If you can't read the text below, it says~

"the attractiveness of the dictionary as a whole.

Additional features are the appendices on foreign words and phrases, common abbreviations and contractions, the Greek alphabet, Roman numerals, countries with their capitals and populations, exploration, mountains, volcanoes, rivers, lakes and bridges."



and the back, just in case you wondered ~ I neatened up the raw edges with a bit of masking tape, I love the texture of it.


I'd love to hear what people think of it!
speak to you soon.
cassette.x

My latest adventure was with the Christmas lights. Most were really terrible (although I learned a lot about shutter speed!), but I quite liked this shot of the fairy lights on my stairs...

that is a wicked shot kaffrin. you should definitely get it printed, I'm a strong believer that having the prints in your hand or up on your wall is just as important as taking the pictures.

I'm also obsessed with fairy lights... and drew this in the christmas lights last year, amongst other things...



sorry for the copyright mess, but I'm a photographer by trade and therefore paranoid about image theft and so on. nevertheless, I hope you like it maybe I ought to share more.

speak to you soon!
cassette. x 

hello there

basically, I promised a friend of mine that I would make her a mixtape ... about a year ago! when we discovered the joys of the "BREAKDANCE: YOU CAN DO IT!" instructional cassette, last year sometime. I finally got my act together and although it says november, she unwrapped it as a christmas gift just a few days before the 25th.

I'm really not sure where I should have posted this topic, so here it is in "miscellaneous" - although it could have been under "occasions" or recycled items, since the tape, fabric, books it's balanced on (which were part of the present too, they're not just set decoration!) and even the pen I used are all second-hand.

I'd really appreciate some feedback

an overview.


ahhh. this is just whole package together really... again.


detail of the flowery fabric I stitched onto the cover


outside (on the back)~


inside~


and, (sort of) all together ~ apologies for an overload of images


hope you like it!
speak to you soon.
cassette. x

[watch this space.]

hey kids!

a story. some time ago, I happened upon an old hardcovered book called "girls' stories" with an appallingly cheerful cover. I ripped out the pages, and in true craftster style, sewed up a whole range of mixed papers, glued them in with dodgy seventies bedsheets as end"papers", and the book was re-born as a sketchbook.

needless to say, I took it everywhere (even to Paris, to the Louvre!) ...and I've since been forced to retire it, since I can't really fit anymore drawings in. however, after using a store-bought sketchbook again, I've started to miss the different papers, the whole character of the thing, and of course, people's astonishment that I've made the whole book myself. what can I say? 

last night, I started on the new sketchbook. a new year and a new start, I guess!

I'll post pictures when I can - but will tease you with the information that I have about five or six different pieces of ancient sewing machine case strewn about my floor ... and before you jump to any conclusions, it was going horribly mouldy before I started disembowelling it - no seamstresses (or antiques dealers) should be reaching for their scissors!

watch this space.

cassette.

PART 1: DECONSTRUCTION

A selection of images from the deconstruction process. Wish I'd taken some before I cut it all apart but believe me, the mould was extensive. The case was essentially a box, with layers of card, paper and a leathery outer layer. It had metallic elements to strengthen the outer edges and was stitched with a strong, probably waxed thread. However it had suffered over time (and from being left in my dank cellar) and the bottom of it was almost completely rotten, with a variety of beautiful colours of mould.

Firstly, some of the papers from the inside - I ripped these out and pinned them up on my beams to dry them out. I probably won't use these right now but will save them for other projects.


Just a selection to show you what kind of surfaces and textures I'm working with - and of course, the trusty stanley knife


The work area... and more tools. I've had to use the pliers (normally for jewellery-making) in order to extract studs, pins and close metallic joins. The hammer is smaller than your usual hammer and intended for paper crafts but it's been pretty good for knocking some sense into the metallic corners of the box, which you can see below left.


PART 2: RECONSTRUCTION??

Oh my! finally I've had the time to get back to this...

I've been collecting different papers for months in order to sew them into fat little signatures; but I'm not your common-or-garden "fancy paper" kid. I can't bring myself to spend money on lush thick paper for sketchbooks (seeing as... I have barely any money) and instead, I love to mix it up like this.

There's watercolour paper, cartridge paper, sugar paper, tracing paper, plain fabric, patterned fabric, magazine pages, plastic document wallets, and even a healthy bit of plastic bag thrown in there. Some pages I prepared with ink washes, but not many of them.


My stitching is haphazard at best, and my fingers will hurt forever.


...but it was worth using this fishing line to bind it all! found it on a beach some holidays ago, been making jewellery with it before but it seemed nice enough to use for this too.


and everything together... half-way through, when I decided it was best to retire to bed with a big cup of tea.



PART 3: LET'S GET OUR FINGERS FILTHY WITH PAINT NOW PLEASE

This has taken me a ridiculously long time.



The spine. I put D-rings in so that I could mess about with tying ribbons to the book and such.


Sort of a side view. shows the rusty lock on the front cover, I love it.


...and in case anyone was enormously curious, the back is here and looks like this.


I think I have already qualified as overweight in terms of photography. But gratuitous sketchbook images abound.





and because I made a pocket in the back... for all that sketchery gubbins... a shot of it in, er, "action".



---

finally! ...hope you like it. I'd love to get some feedback, as it's been pretty much a labour of love. feel free to share your sketchbook stories, too - I'll no doubt be posting more of mine.

speak to you soon!
cassette.

hi M. Carmen

fortunately I understand some german. the picture you show here is not the "foot" of the machine - it is the pedal. I'm not sure, but munk_munk might mean the foot, which looks like this-



If it is the foot that munk_munk is talking about, she wants to know if it is similar to the one on her machine, although they might not be the same brand of machine.

I'm sorry I can't help you with the sewing machine itself, but maybe I've clarified the language a bit? 

please be kind and don't rob this... it's one of my favourites.
(edited: same applies to the others)







feel free to let me know what you think.

edited to say: thankyou for your corrections here folks. this is in fact a bee, and not a wasp, and I feel suitably foolish about it!  I might put more of my (creatively-labelled) photography up in this thread, in fact.

why hello there

I'm obviously a bit of a craftster novice (second post, anyone?) but thought I'd volunteer this bracelet I made.  I didn't think anyone has done this before, even though I've seen people knit and crochet bags from strips of polythene in a similar way. Just let me know if you've seen it/done it before as I don't want to make some false claim to pioneership!


(apologies for the graininess of the image, I promise my photography gets better from here onwards.)

It's old oxfam/charity bags cut into strips, and then finger-knitted (tatted? whatever you like to call it, very popular with "the kids" a while back) into an organic-looking rope. I sellotaped the ends together quite tightly and wore it for ages ~ before losing it to the mess of my room.  

what d'you reckon, folks?