Dragonflies Albums

Aren't they gorgeous? Lovely aren't they, I didn't need to do anything to the covers. The cotton material I used speak for themselves. They came from Sam (lovely expat lady who taught here for nine years) and she figured they might have come from when she visited Japan. Either way, reason being she loves dragonflies and one of the material had dragonflies print on it and the other was just beautiful, she didn't intend to use it but when I saw it I just had to turn it into a book for her. Sam asked for an album for her pictures, I had the opportunity to see what she was seeing and nature is just fantastic being the model. The images she captured was just gorgeous, I felt lucky being able to see that, she showed me one of the albums she kept them in. I instinctively checked out the album, how it was constructed and put together. Book structure... not too bad. Handmade paper and carved bamboo... wow!

Anyway, from the cloth Sam gave me, I was able to make her two stab albums. The black one the material was just enough to cover the board and a teensy seam allowance to fold over the board. Added black ribbons to tie the covers down and my signature whenever doing a stab binding to finish with a little bow at the top corner, and Sam is dragonfly mad, I managed to find these dragonfly charms which are tied to the ends of the ribbons.

The blue album, the covers are padded front and back. The material had prints in squares and I used the portion that had the dragonflies on it for both front and back. Added more dragonflies as embellishment and if you noticed the black ribbon bows echoes the dragonfly wings! How fantastic is that?

Since Sam is moving away to Oman I made her a little A6 journal as a going away present using the leftover cloth. I stitched the five sections with long stitch binding of a sort, was working one end at a time, did the head part then the tail part of the book. I numbered the sections in pencil so I know which order to bind them in after I marked the holes so they'd lined up, and now come to think of it I forgot to rub them out after I was done binding... Nuts... Anyhoozy.

I delivered the books to Sam in the evening, after doing a quick photo shoot before wrapping them up, and she was so happy when she unwrapped them. Oh you should see how her eyes lit up when she saw the dragonfly charms. They were such great finds, there's a reason why I check out practically every single thing in a shop or stall, because you never know what you might find that will be perfect for that art piece, and why I like to have a lot of time allowance for that perfect add on to present itself. When I presented her the journal she was really pleased and decided that all the books will be used for Oman.

My books are going to Oman! Yay! My work are traveling the world! They get to see more places than I do... sorta like they're the diplomats for me, heheheh, how ironic... (personal joke there)

For more pictures of the albums and notebook, they're all here!

I wonder if I have enough material to make another little notebook, it's so sweet!!!