The Joy of Books

This video is all over the internet... and well it should be. "The Joy of Books" is a lovely, magical work by Toronto's Type Books. (Bonus points if you spot Hoopla amongst the shelves!)

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Small Pleasures: A Book Review of Microcrafts

I like tiny things. When I was small myself, I had a dollhouse (inhabited by bears and bunnies) and also a few shelves and a type case filled with little items like a glass hedgehog, tiny teapots, little shells, and other miniature treasures. And while I've since tried to reduce the amount of clutter and knick knacks in my life, I am still partial to a few cute, tiny touches here and there, like the penny-sized plastic antelope that grazes atop a picture frame in my kitchen and the micro hippo that lurks on my desk. (But seriously, who doesn't want a house hippo?! Seriously.)

So I think I was already pre-conditioned to enjoy Microcrafts: Tiny Treasures to Make and Share, a new book by  published by Quirk Books. Compiled by Quirk editior Margaret McGuire and crafters Alicia Kachmar and Katie Hatz, the book presents 25 projects for crafts dreamed up by a dozen or so crafters. Like the book title implies, the projects are not only smaller than bread box, they're smaller than a slice of bread. Usually much smaller.

Projects include bottle-cap frames (or necklaces), paper bunting to decorate a cake, "microtaxidermy" (not to worry, the animals are made out of polymer clay), tiny stuffies and more.

Most of the projects are quick and easy to make -- like peanut-shell boats and paper-and-toothpick speech bubbles -- but some are more involved, like the polymer clay candy charms and miniature macrame hangers for plants. One great things about making microcrafts is for most you can use up little scraps of materials left over from regular-sized projects.

I tried out the pattern to make mini book. The instructions were clear and easy to follow, though I must say trying to hold those tiny pages while sewing them together was a little challenging! Which, of course, is half the fun... I definitely fluctuated between thinking "This is crazy, why am I making something so small?" and "This is awesome, I'm making something so small!" In the end, the latter won out: the cuteness is worth it.

I'm looking forward to making some cute lil' owls to decorate my miniature xmas tree for the holidays, and the felt flower pockets are really lovely, too.

Microcrafts is proof that good things come in small packages. Especially if you stitched up that small package yourself.

Microcrafts is available at your local bookstore and online.

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Hoopla Happiness

The Vancouver book launch for Hoopla was really fun. It was great to see such a good turn out, and great to chat to everyone there, including the lovely Leanne Prain (author extraordinaire) and Kirsten Chursinoff (embroidery artist extraordinaire), and one artist who's project is featured in the book who had travelled all the way from New Zealand to be there!

I didn't know which photos were going to be included in the book, so it was a fun surprise to open the book and see. The photo of me and my husband got into the book, looking all super cute (even if I do say so myself, heh) with embroidered hearts all around us, as well as my favourite photo of all: my little nephew 'reading' the newspaper, looking very serious and dapper with his embroidered moustache!

I'm really excited to see my work in print. In my day job in the publishing industry, I work with books every day, but seeing your own work in a book is pretty thrilling. More of this to come in the future, I hope. There are so many awesome artists featured in the interviews and projects; it's interesting to see the different directions that makers are taking the medium of embroidery.

As it turns out, Leanne is going to be doing my project at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco, as one of their Craft Bar events this Thursday, October 6th. So if you're in San Fran, bring a photo and some embroidery floss and go to the event!

Leanne will also be in San Mateo, Portland, Seattle, and Bowen Island. All the details are on the Hoopla Book Tour webpage.

You can read more about Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery on Arsenal Pulp Press website or on UnexpectedEmbroidery.com

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Hoopla! Vancouver Book Launch ... Tonight!

A little last minute.... but tonight is the Vancouver launch for HOOPLA!

 

Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery is a new book from Leanne Prain, who wrote Yarm Bombing.

At 400 full-colour pages Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery is a spectacular subversive embroidery opus. The book contains interviews, profiles, history, technique and over 28 innovative patterns for readers to create.

I am excited about this book because (A) it's a great topic, (B) is bound to be awesome and (C) one of the projects in the book is by me!

I can't wait to see a printed copy of the book this evening. Four hundred pages -- it's a beast!

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Handmade Nation Vancouver Premiere... and GIVEAWAY!

This is not something that Canadians are "supposed" to say, but I've been jealous of the States.

Ever since the Handmade Nation documentary started making the rounds of the USA, I've been hoping that it would travel north, cross the 69th parallel, and be screened in Canada. Specifically, in Vancouver.

Well, I am jealous no more! Handmade Nation premieres in Vancouver this July!

Handmade Nation Vancouver Premiere
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
Rio Theatre, 1660 East Broadway @ Commercial Drive
Craft Showcase at 7:00pm
Screening at 8:00pm

Go here for details and to buy tickets.

But wait, there's more. This not just a screening -- the movie will be preceed by a craft market full of local talent, plus filmmaker Faythe Levine herself will be there for a Q&A after the movie, along with a book signing for the companion book, Handmade Nation: The Rise of D.I.Y., Art, Craft, and Design, co-authored by Cortney Heimerl.

In case you couldn't tell, I super-excited about this event.

I'm also super-excited to announce that I have a pair of tickets to give away!

To enter, just leave a comment below by June 30th. I'll draw a winner at random on July 1st.

Big thanks to Andrea and Rob, for organizing all of this. They're the fab duo from Lotus Events, who also organize the Got Craft? and Got Craft? Bite Sized shows.

To find out more about Handmade Nation, check out their website. Poppytalk also ran a great interview with Faythe a while ago.

And last but not least, here's the trailer!

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let the wild rumpus start!

How terribly, terribly wonderful is this?

Terrible Yellow Eyes is a new project started by Cory Godbey, who has invited artists to contribute their own tributes to the classic picture book, Where the Wild Things Are.

Over the coming weeks and months I'll display a growing collection of works created by invited contributing artists and myself. We share a love and admiration for Sendak's work and the pieces we present here are done as a tribute to his life and legacy.

Simply put, like a visual love letter to the book, with Terrible Yellow Eyes I am seeking to celebrate and promote the original masterwork by Maurice Sendak in the best way I know how -- with pictures."

Read the rest of Cory's heart-felt explanation. I'm sure many of us can relate to what he says about this book and Maurice Sendak - I know I can.



There are already a lot of amazing pieces posted on Terrible Yellow Eyes. I can't wait to see what else emerges as the project evolves.

Pictured here are works by Mike Lee and Jared Chapman.

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hack your moleskine

You could win a liiiifetime supply of Moleskine notebooks!

How, you ask? Well, you gotta hack your Moleskine.

Share your ideas on how to hack your Moleskine and win a lifetime supply of Moleskine notebooks!

My Moleskine 2.0 Competition celebrates the intimate relationship between life hacking digital nomads and the Moleskine notebooks.

It is devoted to giving tips and tricks to improve your quality of life by automating, increasing productivity and organising with Moleskine notebooks.

The competition opens to all Moleskine fans worldwide, who can share their own ideas on how to hack their Moleskine notebooks.

Winning entries will also be exhibited. Get all the deets here and enter before May 31.

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craft rock friday with lisa hannigan

The bittersweet video for Lisa Hannigan's "Lille" is full of separation, tragedy at sea, heartbreak, reunion... all told in through the timeless medium of pop-up books.


Lisa Hannigan - Lille from ATO Records on Vimeo.

Lisa Hannigan gets extra craft-rock-friday points: her album is called Sea Sew, and her website is super-crafty, also, with a lovely knitted background and quilted patches.

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craft rock friday with kraak & smaak

Funny, this week I was just thinking about flipbooks - how hard it would be to make one, how long would it take, what I would make...

Well, Kraak & Smaak's "Squeeze Me" video features some fantastic flipbooks. Catchy and clever.

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books for little magnolia

What do you do when your friend becomes a father? After you smile and smile, you buy books, of course. Here are my picks. I know there are so many wonderful ones out there... it was hard to choose! I wanted to try to stick to baby books, since opening it up to kids' books in general would have been too much and too early on - she was only born this past Saturday, after all. Any great ones I missed?

This book is wonderfully designed/illustrated.

My very favourite as a baby.

A classic that will never go out of style... 60 years and going strong!

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julie morstad wallpaper

Hot damn. Julie Morstad wallpaper!



Julie Morstad is one my fave artists. I first saw her beautiful, eerie fairy tale drawings at the Atelier Gallery in Vancouver. Her picture book, When You Were Small, which was written by Sara O’Leary, is a brilliant concept, beautifully executed. Drawn & Quarterly recently published her mini-comic, Milk Teeth, which you can catch a sneak peek of in this PDF. And now you can have her work all over your walls.

Turns out the company printing her wallpaper, Rollout - like Julie - is based in Vancouver. Way to go, Canada! Most of the fancy wallpaper companies I read about on design blogs are American or British - it's nice to see Canucks in the game, especially when they're highlighting contemporary Canadian artists and illustrators.

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a christmas story

Can't decide which is better: a real xmas tree or a fake one?

How about neither. Just use whatever's lying around the house.

This bookshelf tree was made by by Frank Visser of IJM.


(via)

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bedside reading, bedside painting

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what does it mean when you paint a picture of several thousand words?



Roula Partheniou's paintings in Winnipeg's Other Gallery are canvases made to resemble book covers.

I'm not sure if you're intended to hang these on the wall, or pile them on a bedside table or bookshelf. In a way, they could be used like those fake sets of encyclopedias that people put on their shelves - only much, much prettier.

Check out Roula Partheniou's paintings here.

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miranda july

Props to the multi-talented Miranda July, who recently won the 2007 Frank O'Connor award for short stories for her first collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You - beating out such Big Muscle names as Alice Munro.

If you haven't seen the book's website yet, you must check it out. Forget Web 2.0, the stovetop is the REAL future of the internet.



I recently read No One Belongs Here More Than You and was expecting to fall into Serious Crush with it, the way I did with Miranda's movie, Me and You and Everyone We Know. Like the movie, the book was all about strange, quirky things people do, and the stranger, quirkier things they think and feel - none of which are really so strange and quirky, because the strange and quirky are actually fascinating and beautiful. Where MAYAEWK (the movie) differs from NOBHMTY (the book), however, is that the movie seems to wonder and marvel at life, and ultimately makes you feel intrigued and hopeful, whereas the book made me feel quite down and depressed. I don't need a happy ending, necessarily, but did feel that, for the most part, the stories were united by a theme of hopelessness and futilty.... which I'd say is the exact opposite of what the movie does. Hrmph. Did anyone else out there read NOBHMTY? What did you think?

Miranda July is also asked "HDYGTFAJ?" (or "How Did You Get That F*&%ing Awesome Job?") by ReadyMade, in this month's issue of the magazine.

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quit smoking ... and start reading!

I love these book package designs - all very clever indeed.

No Smoking by Luc Sante - a visual history of the culture of smoking.

Tank Books are tagged as "Tales to Take Your Breath Away" (heh) - they're classics shrunk to fit inside cigarette packs.


Last but not least, this one is not really about smoking, so much as burning... Burning Man: Art in the Desert by A. Leo Nash is a glimspe into the legendary Burning Man festival in Nevada. Sadly this year someone set fire to the Burning Man four days early.


How much does the design of a book affect your decision to buy it? Have you ever bought a book because of it had a unique or 'novelty' design? The design of The Game by Neil Strauss tipped the scales for me (from browse to buy) - it was packaged to look like a bible, complete with golden-edged pages and a red ribbon placeholder - but with gold girlie silhouettes on the front - because it was supposed to be about the 'bible' on how to pick up women.

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bringing the rainbow inside, part two

I've seen others do it, I watched Siobhan do it and post about it, and now I've finally had the time to do it myself. And I adore it. Thank goodness I have so many vintage kids' books - otherwise some sections (yellow, for instance) would have been sparse.

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nina katchadourian

More about books today here on Magpie & Cake. But that's not all.

It went like this, see. I came across artist Nina Katchadourian on the Quipsologies blog. They were talking about one of her pieces (the books one - more on that in a moment)... and I then I discovered her other work. And man, there's a lot of fabulous, creative stuff going on with Nina. Here are a few of my faves...

First off, Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books project. She reorganizes books into groups so that their titles can be read in sequence. This would be a really funny (and time-consuming!) way to arrange your whole bookshelf. Talk about meta-narrative.

Another fun project is Talking Popcorn, in which a microphone was mounted inside a popcorn machine translates the popping sounds into Morse Code, which is then spoken aloud by a computer.

Genealogy of the Supermarket is a collection of 78 photos of the people who appear on common grocery products, like Aunt Jemima, Mr Clean, Chef Boyardee and the Sunmaid Raisins girl. They're arranged like a family tree, as if the supermarket was a big old homestead.

One of the most crafty projects - and also one of the most delicate - is the Mended Spiderweb project, in which Nina carefully patched up torn spiderwebs with red sewing thread (which the spiders later threw out!).

I love how diverse Nina's works are - but they all share a real sense of creativity and fun. And, they're just plain awesome.

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bringing the rainbow inside

It's a rainy Sunday out there - and by 'rainy', I mean monsoon - so I'm getting caught up on projects around the house.

Of course, it's always more fun to do the non-essential projects first... So I rearranged my bookshelf by colour. I've posted before about people who have done this - see here and here - and I figured it was time to try it out for myself.

Here's what my bookshelf looked liked before. Quite messy and drab.



And here's what it looks like now. Much prettier, don't you think?





Arranging my books by colour has definitely cheered up my living room. And now whenever I feel like reading something green, I'll know just where to look.

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i can't remember the title, but i know it had a red cover

Chicago-based letterpress diva, Orange Beautiful, recently blogged about this amazing face-out bookshelf, and I couldn't help but repost the image here. It's the work/live space of artist Dale Chihuly.

This shelving method is perfect for you if:

a) You are the kind of person who wanders into a bookstore, looking for a book, but you can't quite remember the title and you can't quote remember who wrote it... but you remember there was something red on the cover... maybe a strawberry... or a tomato... or a balloon... or something... or maybe it was more orange than red... or maybe pink... Well, now the problem's solved, cause you can see all the covers at a glance. "Oh, the red book? There it is!"

b) You have a huge collection of oversized art books. It looks like Dale's removed the book jackets, leaving just the cloth. Interesting move - it definitely makes it look less like a bookstore and more like an art show. (Did you know that in most chain bookstores, the books that are displayed face-out or on tables are there because publishers paid a fee to the store? It's not that the bookstore actually thinks they're better or anything. Just something to keep in mind.)

c) You have a spiral staircase and a multi-level library in your home. (I wish!)

Also check out Orange Beautiful's elegant and smile-icious letterpress cards.

P.S. If bookshelves are your thing, also check out the rainbow organizational system.

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turn the page

Bibliophiles, hold your breath. Texan photographer Cara Barer takes absolutely beautiful photographs of books - worn, tattered, curled up old books.

She gets the effect by soaking books in her bathtub...

I realized I owned many books that were no longer of use to me, or for that matter, anyone else. Would I ever need "Windows 95?" After soaking it in the bathtub for a few hours, it had a new shape and purpose. Half Price Books became a regular haunt, and an abandoned house gave me a set of outdated reference books, complete with mold and neglect. Each book tells me how to begin according to its size, type of paper, and sometimes contents.

See the full gallery of photographs here and here.

(Via Your Daily Awesome.)

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