I like big books....

I love books and I love a cute bookmark.  I started a tradition with our book club back in 2007 when I brought back bookmarks from the Sydney Opera House for all my book club friends.  Since then, everyone has brought us bookmarks from all of their travels.  So, I've got a really cute collection of bookmarks from India, China, Turkey and even Marfa, Texas.  Since my book club was celebrating it's 6th anniversary, Anita and I wanted to do something small for everyone.  If you remember the totes we made for our 5th anniversary, you'll know Anita is a magician with the silkscreen.  Recently, she dug into her magic hat and pulled out a pretty awesome idea for our 6th anniversary gifts.

I saw a t-shirt online that I wanted to steal the quote from so I basically threatened to hold my breath until Anita came up with an idea on how to incorporate it in our gifts.  It's a good thing she's so crafty because I wouldn't have lasted long, but we'll just keep that between us.

She came up with the idea to make to make some button pins, but that didn't pan out because it required us to buy or rent a machine.  She then discovered that you can make fabric buttons with just a simple cover button kit and refills available at Hancock Fabrics. And suddenly all of my dreams were fulfilled.  Making fabric buttons has sort of been a dream of mine for a while now.  I have weird dreams, I know.  Then, I was stumped as to what we would do with these fabric buttons and she came up with the ingenious idea of a book band.  And that, my friends, is how the bookband was born.  

 

We decided to silkscreen the quote onto some fabric I have in my stash.  I designed the button with the quote and Anita worked her magic with the screen and got it ready for us. You can see the quote here.... "I like big books and I cannot lie."  In case you don't get it, it is a play on Sir Mix-a-lot's song "Baby Got Back."  Cracks. Me. Up.  Needless to say, I had this song in my head for a few weeks.....

 

We originally went with a yellow paint on linen so this pic is from our first couple of trials.  It didn't show up well on the fabric - and linen is not the best fabric to use when silkscreening such a small surface area because the weave is so large - so we ended up going with black ink and another fabric.  It actually looked better that way anyway. 

We cut up all the quotes according to the size specified on the cover button.  Our buttons were going to be 1 1/2", so it was maybe an additional 3/4" of fabric that is required to wrap around the button. 

Our first good button!!!   The kit was easy to use and push the back onto on the front but the "refills" aren't.  We had to coax them with a couple of taps of a hammer.  One thing: The "refills" aren't refills.  They don't require the kit.  I want to write Hancock a letter to tell them to get familiar with what they are selling but I'll let it go this time since the box on the "refills" say 'no extra tools required'. 

Our pile of buttons!!!!  We took those and strung 3/8" elastic thru the back and sewed the edges together to create a loop.  Then, we burned the edges to ensure they wouldn't fray. 

Our book bands!!  This is them in action on my Kindle.  Trust me.  The irony was not lost on us.....

 

And here they are all wrapped up!!  Our fellow book club members loved them.  We figure this will be the beginning of our bookband empire.  :)

Crafternoon

Even though I didn't do any of the real work on this next project, I did offer tons of moral support so I figured I had rights to post about it. That, and it kind of fulfilled one of my life long dreams. Silk screening.

My book club is having it's 5 year anniversary next weekend. All the members of the book club are buying shirts with the quote, "The first rule of Book Club is: you do not talk about Book Club." It's a play on the number one rule in Fight Club. We are going to all wear the shirts to our August meeting, go see Eat, Pray, Love, and then go out for dinner and drinks to celebrate. We will be having a book exchange where everyone has to bring a new book with the number 5, or the word "fifth" in the title or somewhere on the book. Should be good times.

My crafty friends and I wanted to do something special for everyone and, well, it was a good excuse to have what my friend calls a craft-ernoon. So we decided to make some totes for the group. I did a little research and had suggested trying out a stencil using freezer paper, but my friend scoffed at me and busted out all her silk screening supplies. I still haven't seen her craft room, but I imagine it looking like an art supply store with aisles and aisles of crafty goodness.

Anyway, she basically did all the leg work, so I can't get too detailed here. Inspired by the t-shirts, she created a logo for us and put the image on the screen. I am not sure about the process, but I am pretty sure it involves some magic. We all got together and help silk screen the image on the totes. Here's some (iPhone) pics of the day's events.

We tried playing around with the color by adding some white in it. We only had acrylic paint on hand, but figured it wouldn't harm it too much since it was just totes and not anything anyone was going to wear. But the pigment in this silk screen paint must be ridiculously potent because after adding nearly two bottles of white acrylic paint, our red paint came out, well, red. So, this is the color we ended up with. Red.

This is the practice run on one of Mr. Bean's old t-shirts to make sure we were going to achieve perfection.

Here my friend is applying the paint on a tote. So exciting. You'll notice our little template we rigged up in the bottom left hand corner of the picture. We did this we could keep the image centered on the tote. It was just scraps of cardstock taped together at the corner to ensure that we got it right every time. And we did. Plus or minus a one or two. Or three. Definitely no more than four.

The final product!!! Perfection!!

Don't they look pretty?!?!! I get giddy just looking at them. TOTALLY doing this again. With my friend's help, of course.