Sort, Catagorize, Organize

I love to organize. I really enjoy sorting through things, categorizing them, putting them in containers and making it look pretty. I guess it fulfills my need for control. My mom says I've always enjoyed this sort of thing. It's only been in the last year or so that I have found out that there are actually professional organizers. People are willing to pay for something that I like to do. I've been thinking "Maybe I should become a professional organizer." I realize though, there are a few things that I need to learn to do better, like communicating how the systems I set up work. Case in point, I have been helping my husbands aunt get some things straightened up at her house. She struggles a little with paper clutter, as a lot of people do, so I set up a little mail station for her with a place she can put catalogs/magazines and a mail sorter with a letter opener. I did all this while she was at work, so I never really sat down with her and explained the process I had envisioned, so it's become just another horizontal surface that collects clutter. To me, it's obvious how that space is to be used, but, duh, I was the one who came up with it.

That brings me to one of my beliefs about successful organization systems. The people who will be using the system need to be involved with the planning of it, or it is not going to work for them. When I was an aide in a kindergarten class, the teacher I work with would have me organize things for her, but they never stayed organized because she wasn't involved in the process. I've also found when organizing things, that people don't always have the same priortization of the stuff. My sisters and dad have organized things for my mom, to do something nice for her. She appreciates having things straightened up, but often, she is not involved in the process, so some things get put in a location that is inconvenient for her.

Chris has asked me to help her organize a few things around the house, so as I finish the projects, I will post what we did and how it turned out. Then, maybe it will give you some ideas, and if you would like my help with an organizing project, I would be happy to oblige.

Bookbinding

I had made a couple different kinds of books before in my calligraphy class, and they turned out nice. Currently, they are in a box somewhere in our storage unit, I’m not quite sure where, so I don’t have any pictures of them. A couple of weeks ago, I made a few more using some techniques I learned on the internet (you can learn anything on the Internet…). I did take some pictures of them, though the light is kind of harsh since I snapped the photos on the kitchen table with the sun beating in through the sliding glass door.

First up is a Japanese stab stitch binding, which was super easy and quick.

I decided to use it to make a little picture book that we can send to my niece in New York. The cover is heavy chipboard wrapped in scrapbook paper and the pages are textured colored cardstock. It’s bound with red crochet thread.

Next we have a Coptic stitch book. I had never heard of this style before, so I did a little research and this is a style of binding that was used by Christians in Egypt (known as the Copts) between the 2nd and 11th centuries .

You can kind of see a little bubble where I didn’t get the fabric glued down very well. But if you didn’t notice it, forget I said anything.

This makes a little chain stitch across the bound edge which is kind of pretty. The book also lays completely flat when opened, so it’s nice for sketchbooks.

The embellishment on front is a crocheted flower from cotton thread with gold tone glass beads. The curlicues are backstitched in gold embroidery floss, which was kind of a bear to work with as it has a mind of its own.

The fabric is from Walmart, and they advertised it as “fashion leather”. I just glued it to some heavy chipboard. The pages are watercolor paper, since that’s what I had on hand at the time.

The last book I made was a traditionally bound hard cover.

The fabric is green polyester upholstery sample that I got from Rory’s aunt. I’ve seen some other books that have some kind of tie around them, so I decided to use some ribbon for that.
I used gold cardstock for the endpapers. The whole color scheme is kind of reminiscent of the 70s. The pages are just white cardstock.

I ran into a few issues with this book. First of all, I cut the covers the same size as my pages, which only seems logical. However, when you are covering your bookboards, you leave a ¼“ or so between the cover and the spine in order to be able to open and close the book without damaging it. I did not allow for this, so my covers stick out beyond the pages on the side, but it lines up perfectly on the top and bottom, so it looks a little weird, at least to me. The glue was really wet, so it made my endpapers wrinkle a little and the chipboard I used for the covers curled a little bit. The upholstery fabric is thick, so I need to figure out a different way of handling the corners to cut down some of the bulk.

I was also sort of impatient and inadvertently skipped a couple steps before I put the pages in the book, which resulted in this:

You’re supposed to glue a paper down the bound side of your signatures (groups of pages). If I had done that, I wouldn’t have had these gaping holes where you can see the binding tape. Oh well, I’ll remember that for next time.