Author: arielledawn

Long Stitch Leather Journals

| arielledawn
IMG_20151108_155652
A tiny, 2″ tall book made with lamb leather, lavender bookbinding thread, and jewelry charms. Zig-zag stitching.

A few weeks ago I purchased a beautiful lambskin leather hide on eBay that was quite a steal. This weekend I finally decided to use it. I busted out my bookbinding tools, and tried my hand at some leather journals in the long stitch binding style. I had never done this type of bookbinding before, but it was easy to translate the skill from regular textblock sewing, into sewing exposed stitches through a soft cover. I used Pinterest for some pattern inspiration, and added my own flair to things. You can check out my bookbinding board on Pinterest here. Continue reading →

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Making a Four-Fold Phase Box

| arielledawn

originally posted August 14, 2015

Brittle Books

Most of the books I encounter fall into one of a four categories:

  • I can fix the book in house
  • I can send the book to the external bindery
  • The book is too brittle, but is in the public domain and available as a free e-book
  • The book is too brittle, and is not available online

That last category is the most problematic one. If a brittle book is available online and is not rare or valuable, we discard the book and replace it in our catalog with the free e-book. Usually, if a book is brittle it is over 100 years old, is in the public domain, and someone somewhere has digitized it and put it up for free online. However, sometimes books are brittle and are still in copyright (looking at you, yellowing 1970’s paperbacks!). Continue reading →

Making a Game (of Thrones)

| arielledawn

 originally posted August 17, 2015

Last year, a co-worker approached me about creating original board games to market our library. I had the materials and expertise to make a folding game board and game cards, but we both had little to no experience in graphic design and Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator type programs. However, I had been doing more and more creative things in Microsoft Publisher, which seemed like it would work. I decided to run with it and try using Publisher to create the game board image and cards. Since I didn’t want to waste work time on a time-consuming project that could ultimately fail, I decided to try to make a game for my own use at home first. I had a Game of Throne themed party coming up, so I decided to make a Game of Thrones Seasons 1 & 2 game based on the game of Clue.

who will win

Edit: HBO has recently released an official Game of Thrones Clue game you can get here. The game board, cards, and other items below I created myself for my personal use before that game was made available- I do not sell this game or these images. Continue reading →

Banned Books Week 2015!

| arielledawn

In honor of Banned Books Week, I’ve gathered a bunch of my favorite quotes from banned books and authors, and made them into those pretty, inspirational, Pinterest-worthy images we see everywhere. Enjoy, and to follow Cool Girls Read on Pinterest for this and more!

451 quote

friendship 451

infinite Perks quote

love reading TKAM