Impish Impressions

Yesterday, circumstances had me looking through the cabinet where we keep all the medications.  In this process, I decided to pitch everything that had expired.  In THIS process, I found a lovely little glass bottle, from a child’s liquid medicine.  I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, it was begging to be used.  I washed it out:

and pondered what I should put in it.   It would be at home on an apothecary’s shelf, or being emptied into a witch’s cauldron.  Obviously, it needs to contain souls.

What color is the soul?  What color of liquid do I need in this bottle?  Well, according to two reliable sources, lawyers’ souls are black and viscous, but there is little consensus otherwise.

I took the bottle with me to work this morning anyway, so I could play with fonts and font sizes.  There, I ran into an auditor (who is, honestly, a very nice human being), but the thought was too good to pass up.

I selected the “chiller” font, and played with sizes:

Wound up in 44 font, for the curious. I centered it, printed it, tore the edges and then aged it.  Aging paper isn’t hard.  this method included crumpling the paper, setting it in a dish, and dumping coffee on it:

note- this really works better with sharpie marker or a toner-based copy.  inkjet printer ink is more liable to smear.

I drained the dish, and popped it in the toaster oven at 200 for about five minutes, until it was nice and dry.  I took a lighter to the edges (best done at a sink with a running faucet) to finish the effect.  I originally intended to bring it home and glue the label to the bottle, but I got impatient, and decided to hang the label from the bottleneck:

This left me with the question of “what color is an auditor’s soul?” but auditors don’t have souls, which made the next part really easy.  The bottle came with a standard plastic cap, which is entirely unsuitable for this kind of thing.  I lit a candle, and dipped the neck of the bottle in the melted wax several times, sealing it.

(it later became blatantly obvious that jar-candle wax is entirely too soft for this sort of thing, so if you want to replicate this… try taper candles or sealing wax)

That’s all there was to it:

The auditor was amused.

I like books.  I’ve had my nose in one book or another since learning to read, and one of the highlights of my parenting career was having to remove a book from my daughter’s hands as she read in the light of her computer monitor after bedtime.  (It was a school night or I’d have left her to it.)  The internet has done horrible things to my book habits, I admit, but the fascination with books remains.  I love the potential of a new book, I love the smell of old books, I love the beauty of leatherbound and the playfulness of mass market paperbacks.  I love the promise of intimacy a journal provides, and the convenience of a tiny notebook

A few months ago, I ran across this lady: http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheBlackSpotBooks, and purchased one of her necklaces. I then wandered the internet, and discovered any number of resources for learning bookbinding, and learned that I really didn’t need a whole lot of specialty equipment to bind a book.  Most of the tools I had on hand for other craft genres, or were of the “that’d be nice but isn’t totally necessary” variety such as a stitching frame or a book press.  You’ll get better results with those things, but they’re expensive.   I elected not to forego something i wanted to try because I lacked big equipment… I forged through it.

http://michaelshannon.us/makeabook/index.html had the best diagrams in the first round of tutorials I turned up, and so after a round of pamphlet stitching and a couple of 5-hole Asian stab-bound books for practice, I tried it.  A couple of months, some practice, and adapting his technique to suit myself… and this is the product:

Three sizes of books

The red one is the oldest of the three, and I took the time when making it to hand-tear all the paper. 

the tiny gray one I made largely to see how difficult it would be to shrink all the processes down that far.  It made a few things easier, and a few things harder.

They’re fun to do!  The green one I just pulled out from the final pressing, I do believe I like the little closure.

I find myself quite attracted to this art form, so you’ll probably be seeing more books from me as the months go by.

I made this as a Christmas present

Ah, the introductory post.  These are always awkward.  Hi, I’m Kristen.  I go by Imp online.  I’m barely 30, unnaturally redheaded, and gainfully employed.  I have a husband and a nine-year-old daughter.  We live in a small town in Tennessee.  I run a MacBook.

I can play the oboe with reasonable competence, and have spent the last 18 months (give or take) in a mixed martial arts class.  I do not, under any circumstances, recommend trying to blend those two activities.

I like to make stuff sometimes.  Lately I have been dabbling in bookbinding, polymer clay, a very tiny bit of decoupage, needle tatting, and sometimes pulling out the trusty embroidery hoops for a cross-stitch pattern.  Sometime in the next few weeks I will learn to convince the sewing machine to obey my bidding.

This is a blog about stuff I think is interesting.  Sometimes it will feature stuff that I have made, because I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t think it was interesting, and sometimes it will feature stuff I have found.

Welcome!  I hope you enjoy it here.  It should be interesting.

I think it might.