Leather bound Journal

So my dads Birthday is this Thursday and I wanted to do something special for him. So I decided what better then a leather bound journal. My dad likes leather, weather he will admit it or not. I can tell you with bleeding throbbing soar fingers that hand sewing a leather binding is not easy. I did however love every minute of it even if just the binding alone took a whole day lol. I broke several needles as well so looks like another trip to the hobby lobby. I seem to be loving that place more and more as well I am sure they love me more and more :)Anyhow these are the pictures of the new book my Dad is about to receive.

I figured a lovely picture of my wife and daughter with a extra plus of myself would be a nice catch :P
This of course as you can tell is the inside of the front

Of course the inside of the back :D

A beautiful picture of the front

This is the leather binding I think for hand stitching all of it, it looks rather nice :)

And now the all famous let it stand pose......hahaha!!

I kinda like it I think my next project will be making me one like this to do alittle drawling in. Kinda reminds me of you know a old like journey to the center of the earth type journals.

Mom's bday gift

So my mother practice's alternative religious beliefs and sometimes she writes certain things down in a (Shadow) book. She has tried making her own in the past and has done rather good at it but I figured I would try and see if I could make her one to her liking. So I have spent the past two days working on a new journal and a new bookmark that might strike her fancy. I have not cut the pages yet but they are all sewn in. My exact-o knife broke the other day and I have not had the chance to go buy a new one. Anyways I just wanted to post the pictures for it so everyone could take a look.

This is the bookmark that I made for her, I put two dangles on it so she can keep a spot in two separate places in her book.

I was trying to get a little better shot of the bookmark, not sure if this works its a little closer view. Yes I know you could always click on it and zoom in but. Just trying to get a little better shot. :)

So this is a shot of the front of her new journal.

This is a little better shot of the front of her journal. She seemed to like it so maybe it will do her well. I found this picture online and printed it to a piece of card stock. I then painted around it in black.

A back shot of the journal, I just choose to paint it black

Inside, like I said though I have not been able to cut the pages to the proper length but soon I plan on buying a new blade tomorrow.

Inside of the front book cover, I figured it would add a little to it if I had a prayer from her Belief added in.

Another Day another for my daughter

So I started a book last night and to be truthful I was making it for my wife, but somehow through all of the making I ended up putting my daughter's name in it. As well, the more I worked on it the more it became for my daughter so, in the end it was hers. She loves to draw and she is very good at it so its not a shame that it goes to her, it has a little better quality paper then what she is use to so maybe it will help her out a bit more. I can't wait to see the beautiful work she does in it.

The front, the symbols mean Love, I thought it would be a nice touch given she loves chocolate

A little bit better picture of the front

The back, the emblem at the bottom is something my wife and I were thinking about for the KolorMyWorld emblem

A closer picture of the front

I also made her a piggy bank the other day!!

My daughter's piggy bank, she gets a dollar each week she is good in school. She is only 5 so a dollar is a big deal to her.

Paradise

So I got home after a VERY VERY long day at work, I was exhausted and ready to skip dinner and just go to bed. However my wife wouldn't hear of me skipping dinner. Over the steaming hot meal placed in front of me I begin to be told of how her day went. Apparently it was just as exhausting as mine, which didn't help and just made me that much more tired. I am not saying she is boring but I am saying that after having an exhausting day the last thing you want is to hear about another exhausting day. Which believe me if I was in her situation today I would have been exhausted. You see she volunteered at my daughters school to help serve lunch to the kids, now mind you this school is K-5 and just opened this year and holds right around 680 kids. Apparently there is only 3 lunch ladies and her helping made four, to my understanding over this conversation. Four people serving 680 starving kids is very fun but extremely exhausting. Then she decided to tell me about my daughter, already exhausted and starting to fall asleep over my own meal, she explains that my daughter got into trouble. Of course I woke up and was quite excited, finally something interesting, not that my wife's day isn't interesting but my daughter trouble, uhmmm I am interested now. Anyways apparently my daughter was playing at school and through some of her letters on the floor, now mind you I have taught my daughter to clean up after she is done. However the teacher didn't see it that way and when the letters hit the ground she got onto my daughter and her friend that was playing with her. Okay now I get it, you know school and trying to teach kids to be clean and take care of the items they have, but really their playing come on. The teacher decided to send a letter home explaining this in not so many words and I couldn't help but think "how much fun school use to be " yeah right. So to get on with the point by the end of all this I needed a relaxer and of course a cold beer is nice, but I am out at the moment so I decided to do what any crafty person would do and I made a few bookmarks.

This is a picture of all three that I made to night so relaxing and easy but fun. I haven't put any of the bangles on them yet but still very nice.

This one is my favorite out of the three!!

Kinda kewl looking

My wifes she wanted me to make one for her as well.

Drinking coffee under my Tree

So I got kinda bored today and decided to occupy my time with a little doodle. This little doodle however turned into a bigger doodle that turned into something amazing. I like it at least, its not finished yet or I don't think I am done with it but we will see where it goes. I just wanted to throw it up so it could be seen.

Maybe I'll call it my tree of life....

A few things I have done

These are just a few things I have done a while back I figured I would put them on just to have something to show.

My somewhat failed attempt at pastels. I was a fun attempt, but thats pretty much all it has been. LOL

Still another picture of the above failed attempt, I still haven't figured out how to use pastels and still keep the picture blurry "so to speak".

Another attempt at pastels, but its to defined as to my understanding its suppose to be like a blurr just enough to make out the picture. Obviously I am doing something wrong :)

This one is actually paint, mixed with pastels, I was just playing but my wife seems to like it.

This one is the front to the above picture. It is a mix of paint, clippings and markers. It looks a little better the the above back side :)

A new start

So my wife and I woke up this morning, and come to find out it was the first day of school. I mean not for me of course, but you know the one that could use it. No not my wife either, our daughter she just started kindergarten today and it was apparently her first day. So as we are all getting up and ready to go, my wife and I come to realize that we would have nothing to do with our time. So in that confusion of what to do, we decided to go to Hobby Lobby. Now as we all know that is a very very bad place to go when you have nothing to do with the time that is at hand. Oh I should also mention that me and the Wife are both some what crafty people. So anyways after a very long adventure at the Lobby we finally made it back to the house. Of course we could not wait to break into the items that we purchased. Oh by the way me and my wife decided to share the single webpage instead of having two separate ones. Besides Kolormyworld was both of our ideas.

A very fun little thing to do and my brother in-law is a very good guitar player so I figure it might help him keep his place when writing his songs.

As well my Mother In-law loves her horses so I made her a little book so she might be able to write under a very enjoyable cover its also has some family pictures oriented in. Of course on the other side and on the entire but I did not want to show those pictures.

The inside of the Book for my Mother In-law I believe it has about 60 pages and as you can see kinda colorful on the covers.

New Journal Cover Pics

About 3 years ago my in-laws bought me and my hubby some art supplies. We were in South Korea and without knowing the language were at a loss for asking directions to anywhere "specific". We searched and searched everywhere, at the little markets littering the country side at the big malls and shopping districts. Found nothing of what we were looking for. So...they decided to send us what they knew we liked and thus my LOVE for art books started. I have been putting random collages and cut-outs in this book ever since. But it wasn't until this week that my hubby decided to cover his that i also got a tickle in my toes to do the same. It was a scary process for me. Changing the cover, making it a different book. It had 3 different "completed" cover jobs done on it before I stopped and kept one. I could not decide which one I liked best so I kept going over the layers. It started out bright and colorful and ended in this. The true face. I can't beleive that this is THE book that started it all. And all this time I was afraid of it, because of blank cover.

Sparklebluefaery: Day 13- Handmade Book Winner

I WON!   YAY!  I cannot wait to see the book! I am overwhelmed with anticipation!




Handmade Book Winner!

http://sparklebluefaery.blogspot.com/

She has some amazing posts and beautiful artwork!

Joey's Sketch/Music Book

This book is very special to me.

I made it for my older brother. He is a wonderful artist and beautiful musician. He likes to wrap himself deeply in it. So i thought of a way to make it easy to do both no matter where he is. About half the pages are sketch paper and the other half is blank music paper.

(front cover)

Inside the front cover i photocopied a picture from when we were younger.

(and added a little note)

These are the pages I added on the inside.

My brother and I have always had a special bond as children and even as adults. I made him this book because he is always traveling and ALWAYS  has his backpack on his back. I used silver ducktape to reinforce the edges and spine in the event it gets beat up. :) I cannot wait to see what beautiful things end up in this book. I hope he shares with me. Otherwise it might be hard to talk me into making another one   :)

Love you Joey!



New and Old Journals

These are some of the journals that i have been working on with my 5 year old. Kinda like practice for her school journals. We are homeschooling starting in July and I thought it would be good practice for when we start working in her journals. She has wonderful sense of color and placement for a 5 year old. But she is very intense when it comes to something like this. She has to make it look EXACTLY like what she is thinking of or she wont finish it. She gets very upset. LOL I think we need to work on that. But she is perfect in every way. I have always hoped my children would have a love for art as I do. And they both are amazing.

The front cover of our doodle book

The cover of my hubby's sketch book

Hand-drawn by me, help with color goes to my daughter.

(front)

He asked me to make it colorful. :)

(back)

My daughter's practice with collage. She likes eyes. I did the back. She did the front.

Of course I had to tell her what everything said. AFTER she glued it down simply because it was pretty.

Another one we did. I decorated and she did all the gluing.

I enjoy the time I get to work on these. I especially enjoy that I can incorporate her in the process. It is better than a baby book. I will always have these to document her stages. Some pages are super serious. Some are super silly. But no matter the page it is her. Her artwork in MY books. I will always have that to look at and share with people. So, once i get her to sign all the proper release forms i will post some of her beautiful pages.  :)  

Just another day in paradise......

One thing I have noticed about myself through this process is that I am too indecisive when it comes to something that is going to be hanging around for awhile. I have been making LOTS of journals to work with but cant seem to be happy with any of them. Too small, too big, too short, too tall, too thin, too thick...etc. Most of them get passed into the bookshelf, figure i will use them eventually. Some have been passed on to my kids to draw in, one is on its way to becoming a "hand-drawn photo album" as a gift to "Nana" (my mother) I have been spending alot of time MAKING journals and not journaling IN them.  :-)

But I think I have what I want now so the fun begins!

My next daily journal. It still needs some cover work.

This is going to be my travel journal.

 I am making a trip home to see my family next week,

 and needed something smaller to journal in.

I tried my hand in binding with leather. It turned out OK, I think. :)

Next time I might try adding something in the spine for extra support.

New Journals

Front Cover of my Everyday Journal

Back Cover

My First Journal in all its duck-tape glory

My daughter's new journal

A pocket size note-taker I made for my hubby.

Just some of the journals I have put together for me and my family.