Monthly Archives: November 2010

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Want to know what I’m doing right now?

OK, so this post isn’t about creating art.  It’s about a different kind of art.  Wrapping presents! YAY!  If you know me then you know that I’m a Christmas fanatic.  I am ashamed to admit that I put my Christmas tree up on November 2nd.  Now that Thanksgiving is over, and I’m officially allowed to be excited and post about Christmas, I thought I’d share this video.

This is a good tutorial I found that teaches you how to tie a big fluffy bow on top of your gifts.  I’m practicing it now…

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Sound the Trumpet! My shop is open!

My Etsy shop is open with a grand total of….FOUR ITEMS!  You can tell me if my enthusiasm is spreading…or maybe you can see through it enough to realize that four items is equivalent to beans.  peanuts.  tiddlywinks.

I KNOW, okay?!  I’ve actually been busy with the manufacturing of highly confidential Christmas presents.   So I haven’t been totally slacking as you may have suspected.

So HERE is the link, and if you happen to visit it again soon,  I hope to have many more items up for sale.


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My Virtual Art Exhibit

My most faithful reader (yes, it’s my mom) requested that I post some pictures of the paintings from my art show at CityArt Gallery in September.  At first I was all, “if my readers don’t come to my show, then they can’t see my art,” but then I grew up.  So I’ve decided to give you a virtual tour of the show.  I’m including every painting featured at the show along with my artist statement.

The first place that I called home was a small town in Thailand called Saraburi.  It was a town in the country where a variety of animals could be found.  It was there that I held my first puppy, and discovered my love of drawing.  As children tend to do, I drew the things that I cared about most.  Mostly, they were pictures of my family.

I’ve often heard that to write well, you have to write what you know.  I think that artists have to create works about things that they care about too.  The work you see before you all springs from an internal well of experiences both good and bad.  The landscapes chronicle the difficulty of calling two separate countries “home.”  Many of the other paintings are a narrative of my summer.  I painted some of the significant events while showing how I feel about each one.  Many of the images appear sweet, but there is also a darkness behind each one.



PS  I’m now on twitter (@melodyjmartin), so you can follow me if you care to.  Don’t worry, I will do my best to call all of my updates “tweets” instead of “twitters.”  If I called them “twitters” I would feel like a twit, and people would titter.  I’ll stop before I say something inappropriate.


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5th of November….Remember!

Ok, so this post has nothing to do with the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes, or V for Vendetta–but if you’re interested, here’s a nice little clip from V:

No, instead I wish to inform you that I am making plans to open a shop on Etsy.  I’ve been thinking about it for almost a year, and now I’m going to act!  I hope to sell handmade books, small paintings, drawings, and other stuff that I haven’t thought of yet.  I’ll let you know when it’s up and running.

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Bookbinding (The Final Frontier)

This is the most complex part of the bookmaking process.  Trust me, you’re going to wish you had four hands.

The following is instructions for Coptic binding.  You’re going to need:

  • a ruler
  • waxed linen or embroidery thread
  • bookbinding needle or embroidery needle
  • four hands supernatural dexterity

1) Mark the pages. Place the signatures inside the cover with the folded part facing you.  Line a ruler up vertically with each hole punched into the cover.  Run a pencil down the stack of signatures making a small mark on each one.  Repeat at each hole.

2) Punch the holes. Open each signature and punch a hole at each of these marks with a bookbinder’s needle or embroidery needle.

3) Measure out the thread for the binding. Waxed linen thread is best, but embroidery thread works too.  The length of the thread should be the length of the book times the amount of signatures.  I usually add an extra length just to be safe.  There’s nothing worse than not having enough thread!

Oh, and no Hymnal necessary.  I just used that to weight down the pages.

4) Start Binding. Take one of the covers and one of the signatures.  Make sure that the holes of the signature line up with the holes on the cover.  Open the signature and pass the threaded needle through the end hole of the signature, then the end hole of the cover.

Pull the needle through until there is 1-2″ of thread inside the signature.  Loop the needle around the cover and bring it back through the hole in the signature.  Knot it with the other end of the thread.

Pass the needle through the next hole over and loop it around the cover and back through the hole as you did previously.  Repeat until the last hole.

When you get to the last hole.  Pass the needle through it and the last hole in the cover.  The inside of your book should look like this.

This is where it gets a bit fuzzy.  I do it a bit differently than some people do.  But when in doubt, just try to make it look nice!  After passing the needle through the last hole in the cover, bring the needle under the thread between the cover and the signature.  DO NOT bring the needle back through the hole in the signature.

Instead, pass the needle through the end hole in the next signature.  Make sure the holes in the signature are lined up with the previous one.

Bring the needle through the second hole in the signature and loop it through the thread passing between the previous signature and the cover. Make sure you’re binding the book fairly tight, but not too tight or it will make the cover hard to close.

Bring the needle back through the same hole in the signature.  Move to the next hole and repeat until the last hole.  Your process should be looking like this:

When you reach the last hole, repeat the same process as the previous hole, but don’t pass the needle back through the signature.  Instead, pass it through the end hole of a new signature.  Keep repeating the process adding all of the signatures except for the last one.

5) Bind the last cover and signature. This is the hardest step of the binding process, because you have to bind the last signature and the cover at the same time.  It’s going to be hard to hold, but don’t worry about keeping the binding super loose.  You can go back and tighten it later. Instead of passing the needle back through the last hole in the signature, pass it through the hole on the cover (from the inside) and loop it over the cover.  Then wrap it around the thread passing between the last two signatures and bring it over itself and back through the hole in the signature.  Repeat for every hole, even the last one.

I didn’t have a picture for the first signature hole, but here is the second.

5) Tighten the Binding. When you’ve passed the needle in through the last hole, take another needle (or something comparable) and gently pull on the loops in the last row (inside and out).  This will tighten the binding.  When the binding is tight, tie a knot inside the signature.  It will resemble the knot in the first signature.

This is by far the most confusing set of directions, so feel free to ask me anything if you need help.

Your book binding should look like this:

I hope you don’t take my directions too seriously.  Mix it up and experiment.  Use different materials and see what happens. I love to add things to the inside of the book like drawings on tracing paper, and small envelopes glued to the pages.

One last look at the book, and it’s companion (another book I recently made.)