Hot off the press (well, the screen), the latest issue of Australian design magazine Blanket is well worth the time it takes (a few minutes) to upload the entire issue onto your computer. I’m thrilled to get to share a bit of the limelight (an interview and journal-making tutorial, and my first foray into cut paper illustration) alongside a brilliant lineup of illustrators, photographers and designers. To see why I’m gushing about this magazine, have a look for yourself here.

Drum roll please. I’d like to debut my collaboration with Photojojo: a video tutorial and two limited-edition, exclusively-for-Photojojo handmade journals.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves: click here to see the photo journal video tutorial (scroll to the middle of the page and click “play”), and here to see the exclusive edition handmade journals (if you like them, get your hands on them fast before they’re all gone!).

It’s been a long time in the making, with lots of hard work and preparation from everyone involved (i.e. they had to watch my video over and over to edit it nicely ~ while I can’t even bear to watch the final version once because seeing myself talking on screen feels weird) and they put so much time and energy into taking gorgeous product shots and writing up great specs. A a big round of applause and thank you to everyone at Photojojo!

I just learned this: if you’re setting up an online site to sell things, try to avoid the word “store” in your URL ~ it’ll most likely get blocked by corporate firewalls that are trying to prevent their employees from doing online shopping when they’re at work.

I’ve been (and still am) on the asking end of the table, so it’s really neat to be on the other side sometimes and share some of the things I’ve learned. Here are some of the questions about bookbinding that I’m often asked, and my attempts at answering them:

Q. What are some good resources for bookbinding? I’m having trouble getting started, what should I do?

A. There are lots of different tutorials floating around on the internet. Here are a few that I started with. If you feel like it’ll be easier to be coached through the process, you could take a short bookbinding class/workshop. You can find a local one by googling (ahh, the wonders of the internet).

Making your first book shouldn’t turn into a spectacle where you prepare for days/months to gather materials. Go with one of the easier tutorials and use things you already have at home, like binder clips instead of pegs, a thumbtack in place of an awl, dental floss instead of waxed thread, a heavy book instead of a brick….

To get things rolling, you could set a goal for yourself that you’re going to make a handmade book to give to a friend for a special occasion. The fact that you have to get it done on a certain date for a specific person and that it must look a certain way will get you going. Another fun way to start is by having a bookmaking/crafting party. Invite a few friends over, set out some snacks and drinks, print out a couple of tutorials, and together, make some books!

Q. What glue do you recommend?

If you’re trying to assemble your first book, Elmer’s. But if you want to make nicer ones to use and give to friends, you’ll want to invest in bookbinding glue (which dries more flexible than regular white glue). There are no specific brands, they’ll all be great as long as they are PVA (polyvinyl acetate). Here’s one example and here’s another.  

Q. Where can I find reclaimed paper?

I get reclaimed paper from friends who work in art/education/architecture so they save boxfuls of their drafts and discarded papers for me. Ask your friends to keep a box for recycled papers at their home/office that you can pick up whenever it’s full. Propose a trade with some online crafty types (i.e. trade one of your handmade journals for a big stack of papers). And, if you’re willing to spend a couple of dollars, pay a visit to the 99cent and thrift stores.

Q. What paper cutter do you recommend? How do you cut paper?

I started off with a teeny Dahle rolling trimmer. I now use a Rotatrim professional trimmer. If you’re looking to chop huge stacks of paper, you’ll need a guillotine-style cutter (which I am utterly afraid of — not to mention they are a safety hazard if you have kids or pets in your home!). If you want to cut a gigantic stack of paper perfectly, befriend a printing press/book bindery and have them chop your papers for you with an electric guillotine. Or, forget about the paper cutter altogether and just tear your sheets of paper so they’re all approximately the same size ~ the imperfections add to the handmade quality of your book!

I’ll leave you for now with a great video from If’n Books bindery that will get you laughing. Enjoy!

{Update, April 2008: Hi everyone, thank you all for leaving such sweet messages and comments in response to the tutorial! 
Since I am unable to respond individually to your additional bookmaking questions,  I’d recommend googling your queries online and you’ll most likely unearth some great answers. Best of luck to each of you in all your bookmaking endeavors!}

With my photo journal tutorial receiving quite a bit of buzz online, I’ve been encouraged to submit it to JPG magazine. If you haven’t heard of it before, JPG is a magazine, website, and community that highlights the work of nonprofessional photographers all over the world. It’s filled with stunning pictures, great tips, articles, stories and tutorials on anything and everything related to photography.

My photo journal tutorial is now on JPG’s website, and the next step, and this is where I’d need your help dear readers, is to accumulate a significant number of votes (ah, what a democratic way to decide if something’s worth printing!) so that it’ll be included in the magazine’s upcoming print issue. It’d be so cool if the tutorial makes it into the next printed issue — then even more people would know how simple it is to take a couple of extra prints, a pile of papers, and make their very own photo journal!

If you liked my photo journal tutorial, please cast your vote for it’s publication. It takes less than a minute, and even though you’ll have to sign up, if you like photography, then JPG is definitely worth your time. Thanks for your support!

I always hope for the best when it’s time for my journals to make that dangerous voyage across unknown terrain to get to the homes of those who have ordered them. There are so many things to take into account — what if the postman drops the package, or leaves it on the porch where it’s raining or snowing, or crushes it accidentally by putting someone’s microwave shipment on top? What if the package is delivered to the wrong address, or disappears into the oblivion where all missing packages go?

I do my best to counter each of these scenarios with a generous supply of protective packaging, bubblewrap, envelopes and boxes. For smaller orders, I’ve found that the USPS Priority Mail service is pretty reliable — it’s a flat rate envelope so I can fill it with as much protective packaging as it will hold, it’s delivered quickly, and I can track and insure it for a small additional fee. I always put tracking on my packages — so I can check if they’ve arrived at their destinations.

Despite all the care and time you put into preparing your packages for shipping, after more than a hundred orders have arrived safely at their destinations, the inevitable does happen —  an order is damaged, a delivery goes astray. 

I had one customer tell me her journal arrived completely ruined, looking like it’d been run over by a truck! I was so sad imagining a destroyed journal — after all, I put so much time and care into making each one. I checked with the other customers whose journals were shipped at the same time and heard that their orders had arrived in pristine conditions. I knew that the “accident” had occurred on the delivery unit’s end, only the customer wasn’t very empathetic about it and demanded I be liable for the damages. I learned my lesson and put even more protective padding around each order and wrote out “ordering terms” on my store site to prevent another misshap like that.

I’ve also learned that international shipping is a precarious journey. USPS only offers tracking and insurance on it’s very-expensive international express service. The other option, global priority mail, gets there in about a week’s time, but you’ve got no way of knowing where the package is in-transit, so you can only hope it’ll get there eventually. My Canadian orders shipped through USPS global priority have all arrived safely, so I do offer that option for people who order online, but things can go awry with foreign-language addresses. Specialized shipping companies like UPS or FedEx can handle those types of deliveries for me, but international fees are even higher than the cost of one journal. Very few people are willing to pay for that, and it’s too much to absorb those additional fees myself. So after two seasons of tackling with it, this year, I’ve decided to let the retailers who carry my journals handle int’l shipping. They’re much more experienced dealing with overseas orders than I am! Perhaps later on, when I’ve gotten a bit wiser, I’ll make that option available in my online store again.

For big packages (like the batch of journals shown in the photo above, that I’m shipping to a retail store), I’ve been using UPS (the brown truck fellahs) because their prices are really affordable for ground or 2nd day shipping, they can pick up the shipment directly from my studio, and there is full tracking and delivery confirmation. I had a little incident recently where they misdelivered one of my packages and I was yelled at on the phone by their customer service rep, but then they did safely redeliver it, and a separate customer service agent wrote to apologize. I might still stick to UPS because the convenience and efficiency of how they handle shipments remains pretty impressive.

Despite the little incidents that I’ve encountered, I must admit that packing things up and getting them ready to ship is one of my favorite moments. At the end, it’s all about getting the order to its destination safely. And it’s all worthwhile when I hear back from someone saying that their package arrived safely, that they like their journal, and they can’t wait to start writing in it.

Everything outside is lit up with the crisp winter sunlight. It’s so pretty that I keep getting lured into writing up a list of errands to run, thinking it’ll be a good break from making books in the studio and I’ll be taking a nice walk in fresh air. On the contrary, the minute I step outdoors, my nose and ears are nipped by the sharp winter cold! Brrrr!

So with outdoor time kept to a minimum, I’m sitting here thinking about what other interesting things I could make with the supplies I have around me. There are so many fabulous tutorials floating about on the internet that I’ve bookmarked (I’ll put a few of those up in a separate post later on), and I’ll definitely give some of them a try.

Here’s one of my own that I’d like to share. Remember those photo journals that I made last season which completely sold out within just a few weeks? You could just as easily make one with your own photographs!

Click here, and have fun!

And, when you’re finished, if you’d like to show us what your photo journal looks like, put a link to your image in the comments section of this post!

Shannon Riffe is one amazing lady — she’s the mastermind behind Make It, a blog for crafty entrepreneurs that’s filled with stories and tips for how to transform your creative endeavors into a full-fledged business. Oh how I wish I had read all these articles when I was starting out!!

She’s covered just about everything that a crafty entrepreneur should know about, from business-related things like newsletters and press kits to everyday tidbits, tutorials, and tips on how to organize your storage space (I need help on that one — my supplies are spilling out of the baskets and boxes). And then there are the interviews — I love hearing about the stories and experiences of others who have “made it”! I plan on curling up on the sofa with a cup of tea and reading EVERYTHING on this site.

Shannon’s wealth of knowledge in crafts and entrepreneurship comes from her own experience — she’s created rifferaff, her own line of handmade jewelery and accessories, and she has quite a few other creative projects, batik!, in the works. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

These are just so much fun! Tiffany Tomato takes reclaimed food boxes, resizes them, and rubber-stamps an imprint on the back of each, to make ingenious little food box postcards.

Those are just one of the many useful things she’s made from recycled materials — her shop also includes notebooks made with food box covers, keychains made from wine corks, and recycled bottle cap magnets (these are my favorite!).

She shares how to make eco-friendly things with tutorials that include: a shopping bag made from an old sports jersey, a basket made from a juice carton and plastic shopping bags, and a placemat woven from a cereal box. So clever!

I was so impressed when I saw this site! Instructables has instructions (step-by-step, with pictures) for how to do just about anything you can think of, with everything submitted by its readers. While some are plain fun and silly, there’s practical household repair things and a whole bunch of crafty projects. I typed in a search for “box” and the list included things like making a giant cardboard castle for a children’s birthday party, how to make an earring box, and this fun photo cube made from family pictures.

What a great place to spend a few minutes (to hours) browsing!