One of my favorite things about the Internet is that it allows me to connect with like-minded artist from all over the globe. One of my favorite book artists is Liz Constable and I’m very fortunate to have received her new book “DIY Notebooks made easy”.
In it she describes how she creates the amazing paper she uses in her notebooks, so I just had to give it a try.
Dyeing Paper in Coffee
The longer the paper sits in the coffee, the darker it gets.
Paper drying with cookie cutter shapes on top
If you place things on the paper while it’s drying, the area under them will be lighter. It looks like I finally found a use for all those cookie cutters I bought years ago and never used.
Stack of dry papers
Here is a stack of the finished product. They smell as amazing as they look!
DIY Notebooks made easy
To learn more about this technique, as well as how to make some amazing notebooks, head over to www.bookartstudios.co.nz and order a copy of DIY Notebooks made easy.
So what do jellyfish have to do with a new website? Honestly, not much, but this is what my brain feels like right now. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that shutting down my former website www.juliemortillaro.com and creating www.juliedawndesigns.com would be take so long to complete.
Not only do I still have an enormous amount of product photos to edit, this is my first blog post. I’m embarrassed to reveal how long ago I started working on this.
The photo editing is definitely the most labor intensive and time consuming part of this process. The problem is that I can’t just take a photo that comes out with a white background, so I have to spend a lot of time in Photoshop Elements and Fotor to get them to look decent. Perhaps one day I will be able to invest in some professional grade lighting, but for now I have to make do with what I have.
Product photography is difficult for me and tricky at best, but so very important. I thought if I just tried to wholesale my journals or sell them on consignment I could skip this altogether, but that wasn’t the case. I found out that even if you aren’t setting up an online shop, store owners or buyers still want to be able to view your products either online or in some sort of catalogue format.
Thankfully, I found this out before I went out to a bunch of shops with my journals in tow. The night before I was going to do this, I came across an article written by the owners of a store in Austin. It talked about the most annoying things to do if you are trying to get someone to carry your products. I was about to do them all.
So instead of driving around peddling my wares, I started taking photographs of all the journals I had created over the past few months. Had I known I was going to have to do this, I would have taken photos after I finished making each one.
This might also help explain why this is my first blog post, even though I created this website in July.
As far as blogging goes, I’ve always been horrible about it, which is simply not acceptable. So this time, I’m vowing to be consistent and I really mean it this time!
This is going to be a place to share not only my journals, artwork and the creation of both, but pieces of my life and things that matter to me.
So, goodbye for now, for I have many more photos left to edit!
