This book is an inspirational type of book. The subtitle is 250 exercises to wake up your brain. It is just that: a bunch of ideas to spark creativity and the thought process.There are numerous ways to light that spark- art exercises, writing exercises, thought exercises among other creativity revving exercises.

It's a great little book if your planning a class or need to get your engine running. The great thing about this book is that it's focused on exercises specifically for the artist rather than the graphic designer. Many of the exercises also make excellent journaling prompts and get creative day dreams running.

I give this book 4/5 binder needles and 1 paint covered thumb up.

If you're stuck in a rut this is a great book to pick up and check out, even if you only thumb through it at your local B&N.

Let's talk about sticky fingers. I had a space pen, I loved my silver space pen, I bought it fine refills and used it more often than any other pen I've ever had. I used it in my journals, I used it at work and it survived dropping it on the hard cement of the receiving dock, dropping on industrial tiles, and repeated washings only to be stolen by a coworker who makes around $100,000+ per year. Yeah, that's right, I know who took it. Some one above me in the company, who makes about 3 times my salary in a year. Granted the model of space pen that I had cost only about $20 (silver chrome with clip) but I'd had it for close to 3 year and I had just put a  new refill in it. It had been in numerous photo shoots for my website and had been a constant companion on trips, at work and many people had asked me about it. My pen had been "borrowed" before but had been returned. This time, though, I know that I'll never see my pen again. Why? I don't work in the same office as the person who took it and it's been 4 months or so since the pen was snagged.

So, I'm getting a new space pen, brushed chrome this time, no clip and I'll keep an eye on the higher ups when they are around.

I like this books for it’s creativity. It’s a great book for someone moving from scrap booking or written journaling to art journaling.  Many of their tips and techniques could easily be translated to scrap booking.

Using a few materials; computer, paper, sandpaper and paint they create great effects and there are many ideas throughout. My favorite ideas are the faularoid and fauto booth strip. These can be found on pages 38 and 42 respectively.  It details how to turn a computer photo printout and turn it into either  a polaroid or photo booth image with ease.

The negative of this book is one that I find with a lot of art books- readability. My GOD the fonts change size sometimes 3 or 4 times in a single paragraph, making it very hard to read but look really cool. While I over all enjoyed the books the constant font size and weight change forced me to put the books down repeatedly. I think that the editor that allowed this should out in a headlock and told to NEVER allow it again.

It’s a great book for inspiration but the readability is hampered by the font changes. I give this books 4/5 binders needles and 1 paint covered thumb up.

You can find it here on Amazon.

this video specifically deals with the rise of modernization in Malaysia and it’s effect on their traditional crafts. As always I think this is an important topic. There are already so many crafts that have lots so much due to lack of interest in young people. I have a suspicion that many of the crafts that we knew  even as few as 30 years ago will see more harm in the coming years. Many crafts are seeing a resurgence in interest, such as knitting, crochet, book binding etc.

Just when I think that things are going well, sh!t hits the fan. As you probably noticed my blog was down for a couple of days. Sigh, seems the new host is a pain in the but to set up though the service is better. Go figure. Stupid.

Anyway, the look of the blog is fubar  in that it just ain’t right I’ll be working on it this weekend and see where I can get with it and make it right, bear with me as I go through these changes.

Sigh

This book looks cool. The raw binder board cover, bright yellow book cloth cover and brilliant red printing attracted my eyes to it on the dreary and woefully inadequate craft shelf at my local Border’s Book Store. Opening the book is no different, each page is wonderfully laid out and eye catching.

The imagery in this book is fantastic. There are  many pictures and ideas given throughout. The photography is clear and crisp. The diagrams are good but occasionally the patterning used to color them distracts from the ease of readability.

There are 7 chapters each exploring a different type of book making. These styles are folding books from single sheets of paper, accordion, stab bound, pamphlets, "mutant" books, long stitch and coptic stitch. The set up is from easiest to difficult in styles and thus is a good set up for the beginning binder.

I really want to gush about this book and tell you how good it is, but I just can’t. It would be a good book if you were just starting out in binding, but honestly there are too many good book binding books out there with better diagrams and different and more interesting bindings. There are some fantastic photos of books. Additionally the raw binder board of the cover is easily damaged; in a bag anything rubbing against it leaves a mark or gouge and the corners are easily bent, so the good looking cover doesn’t stay looking good for long.

I give it 3 of 5 binder’s needles and only one paint covered thumbs up.

You can find it here on Amazon.