Cyber Monday is here!

To find out about my 20% off Etsy Promo and a chance to win a free book, scroll down.

Today I got the chance to spend the day with some local artists and crafters at a locally owned craft/fabric shop here in town for the first annual Small Business Saturday craft fair. I had been frequenting The Cotton Ball lately and while scouring their scrap bins for book materials the owner asked me what I had planned for the random lovely fabrics I had meticulously picked out, or maybe I told her, I don't really keep things close to the chest. When she heard about my books she invited me to take part in a craft fair in front of the shop. I met some other wonderful artists, a painter, a quilter, an embroiderer and a few others. They were all very nice and their made me feel right at home. Sadly I didn't sell any books though I did have quite a few people interested in the process of how I make my books, and where I learned how to make books, so while I was there I actually finished one!


But their loss is your gain. I will be offering all of my books for 20% off through the end of Monday 11/26. Read below.

About the book giveaway: when my fanpage: facebook.com/IArtBooks reaches 30 likes I will be giving away one of my books to a lucky reader.


Cyber Mon Promo

As always, my you can find all of my social media links on the upper left of this blog, follow @iartbooks.

My first public appearance.

In eleven hours I will be sitting at a table selling my books at a craft/art fair at a local business, The Cotton Ball where I get quite a bit of my materials. The address is:

1199 Main Street, Morro Bay, California 93442

I know that it starts at 10am, but I am not sure when it ends. I'll update here when I know.

Seriously though, I'm a little bit nervous. Most of the vendors will probably be artists who have been at it for years, then there will be me, sub 30, 2 months in to this craft. Hope to see someone who found their way there from this post. If you do, mention the blog and I'll give you 10% off of a book.

Cheers!

leather stamping and four new books

Saturday mornings usually start with a look at my Craigslist app on my phone to scope out the yard sales. This last Saturday was a dreary cold and wet morning and I wasn't too fond of the idea of going out there. But I checked anyway and there was one yard sale in town and the description said "art supplies." As if that wasn't enough, it was only 5 blocks away. So I stumbled out and made my way down there, and low and behold there was a great big box of crafting vegetable tanned leather. Straps, scraps, snaps oh my! For the price of two designer coffee drinks I set myself up with some great stuff.
I dug up my old tools from when I used to do hand tooled copperwork, namely about 20 hand stamps that I made out of old wrenches and a Dremel tool.

These steel stamps are all handmade by me

I figured if they could stamp hard copper, leather shouldn't be a problem, so here's what I did.

Fun stuff! These will be making their way to an Aston Handmade Book near you. Let me know what you think.

My first attempt at stamping leather

I also finished four new books:

red and white linen, leather spine, headband, and GRAPH PAPER!

black and white linen, red suede spine, leather snap strap, blank paper

two tone leather blank journal.

These three are "quarter bound," in other words the spine is leather and a different material than the board covers. The first book has a really nice graph paper.

red, blue and purple striped graph paper journal.

 A more basic streamlined book, these full cloth books take less time, reflecting a lower asking price, but I assure you the build quality is as good as any of my books.

As always you can check them out and buy these books and more at my etsy shop, (hint: look on the left side of this page) and like and share my facebook page.

Etsy store is up and running

I finally got my Etsy store up and running and my first 5 books are ready for new homes. These are the books I blogged about in my previous post. You can also click through the books on the left side of this page to get to the Etsy shop. I will be adding items (hopefully) every day and will keep you updated on how I am doing. Thanks for checking in on me.