mini sketchbook fauxdori...

envelope design by Oh,Hello Stationery Co.

There's a Traveller's Notebook called a Midori and the brand is made in Thailand. Beautiful leather wraps containing stitched paper notebooks and the design is simple, allowing the user to personalise the contents. But Fauxdoris also exist and are a cheaper alternative to the original and legendary Midori. It's quite simple to make a fauxdori - check out Sea Lemon's YouTube tutorial.

After ordering planner stickers from Oh, Hello Stationery Co. I wanted to use the envelope covering to make some sort of mini sketchbook that would fit in my bag. I just love their envelope design - makes me think of tokidoki. The characters on the Oh, Hello design have each been designed from scratch by Alex and Kayla Benda themselves. The current new releases from the sticker design duo include some of the funniest llamas I've ever seen. 

I have some small Moleskine notebooks to draw in and the buttery paper is very nice to use. But I wanted to make a mini sketchbook using Bristol Board - I also like its smooth white surface that can take markers without bleeding.

making the mini fauxdori

Cut off the back of the Oh Hello A5 envelope where the pattern has no postage labels attached. Fold the piece of card along the middle to form the book cover. It may need to be trimmed evenly.

Cut Bristol Board to size and make it smaller than the cover. I needed to alter the size yet again during the making. Use a bone folder to make neat folds along the centre lines of each page.

I used a very simple way of stitching the inner pages together. Punch 3 holes along the centre fold (I used a large darning needle) and take the cord through the centre hole from inside to outside. Bring the cord through an outer hole from outside to inside and then through 3rd hole from inside to outside. Finally bring cord through centre hole from outside to inside and tie twice making sure the inner vertical cord is caught in the knot. Trim ends of cord and tie knot at each end.

With orange silky cord (I had no elastic) I made the Oh,Hello envelope card into a Fauxdori cover. Too make slipping the loop over the cover easier I curved the corners. It's much more straightforward to follow Sea Lemon's visual instructions than having to read each step-by-step stage - link. She also has some excellent bookbinding tutorials, for beginner and practised, on her YouTube channel.

view from my studio window

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Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit

All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.

Wedding Wish

I've had a rough week with flaring Polymyalgia and ME so Wednesday's blogpost didn't get written. But I did do a congratulations card for a couple nice folk I know online.

Alex and Kayla Benda run an online sticker emporium, Oh Hello Stationery Co, designing all their own stickers mainly for use on planners. They got married at the weekend and I created this set of designs to tie in with the wedding colours. I'd wanted to send them a little hand-done card so I got drawing. 

First I began to doodle in pencil weaving the floral shapes from their sticker designs around a font that evolved on the page. A vine made a good ampersand and two rings intertwine like a little butterfly. 

As usual I inked it up with uniPIN fine liner. I hadn't been able to find my glasses that day so some of the inking wasn't as perfect as I'd intended. It happens. As the card was entirely done by hand and not being photoshopped I used a white gel marker to touch up the errors and began to ink.

Used a mix of markers: Copic, ProMarker, Letraset flex, Chafford, W&N Pigment Markers and Letraset Aqua Markers. Whichever pens matched best the colours used in Alex & Kayla's stickers were used. The mixed medias worked quite well together on Bristol Board although the coverage of the large blue flower at the top left corner (Chafford marker - cheapy cheapy) could have been better.

I chose brown to ink the font and went over the edges again with black fineliner to prevent them getting lost in the foliage.

Congrats Alex & Kayla

WIshing you Health, Wealth and Happiness

xx

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Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit
All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.

mini art books

1st mini art book  

The mini books were a development from 'doodles' I'd begun to draw with alcohol markers from 2012. Wanting to make the images more three dimensional I thought of making illustrative books and kept the size small partially to test out the idea and also because I like tiny objects.

I used small greetings card stock, drew & coloured on the plain side and glued the outer surfaces together. After trimming them I stained the edges with the broad end of a ProMarker.

In each of the mini books drawings were done freehand, without pencil sketches, in the style of the 'doodle' art I'd been making. In the 1st book each double page is unrelated to the others, the book being a collection of individual mini artworks. The images are a mix of fantasy creatures in fantastical settings. 

Alex and Kayla from Oh Hello Stationery Co now own this little treasure.

'full fathom five' is the 2nd mini book, made not long after the 1st. The artwork is based on the story of Ariel's song from the Tempest written by Shakespeare. I've loved this poem/song for a long time. I love the imagery in it and its description of the power of the sea to make irreparable changes.

 'Full fathom five thy father lies,

'Of his bones are coral made.

'Those are pearls that were his eyes,

'Nothing of him that doth fade

'But doth suffer a sea-change

'Into something rich and strange.

 'Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell, ding-dong.

'Hark! Now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.'

I pictured the bells on long ribbons masquerading as seaweed. And the beach with its trails of weed and stones is like a beach from the North Coast of NI, hit by the Atlantic with every turn of the inward tide. 

This book is my own little treasure, made for me by me.

 

'Swarm' was based on an animation I had begun to draw at art college and never finished. In the animation a swarm of ivy leaves, like birds, fly around a single tree. The ivy begins to strangle the tree before flying off in a swarm once more, leaving the tree to slowly fall and merge with the ground beneath it. 

In this mini book the swarm is something sinister, bird-like but also like the 'V' of 'Venom'. The character realises that an attack is happening and tries to defend his/herself.

As the character grabs one from the swarm we can see it has eyes and may be sentient. The swarm engulfs the person, pulling up grass and fallen leaves as it swirls around.

Almost cocooned by the swarm the person beings to metamorphosize, darkening like the black of the swarm itself. 

The person's skin and hair changes. Their irises reflect the transformation and echo the first image of the book.

There's something nice about having a three-dimensional artwork to hold, to turn its pages and reveal further images. Like a small comic book without words.

There are other poems and verses of songs I'd like to illustrate in book form. Mini-sized or larger, a book of images to flick through and stimulate the imagination.

Tomorrow's blogpost: Art Process 'Bird'

Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit
All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.