Nicole Alderman

It looks like some staff members here on permies are also not getting their emails, and they also have yahoo. We're trying to figure out what went wrong. Adding us to your contact list might help, though!

Sometimes Yahoo and Outlook/Hotmail like to decide all permies emails are spam. And, they take this to the next level and never even let the permies emails make it through.

Usually when this happens, Hotmail blocks permies at the same time as Yahoo does, but I'm still getting emails.

Maybe try adding permies@permies.com to your contact list and see if that helps?

I'm looking into this, and it seems that our system thinks our emails to you have been bouncing from about September 13th.

Did you get an email from us on September 13th titled, "the truly passive greenhouse movie is now ten bucks!"

And, did you get an email on the 16th called, "bats, seniors, apple cider vinegar"?

Have you received any other emails from us? Maybe for replies, or the apple I just gave you, or any dailyishes?

I just uploaded a newer PDF version, because I realized for some reason I had "Irish" be the answer to "What language was Ogham written in." I think "Celtic" makes more sense, and the answer is now on the first page. I also realized there's a symbol for "st," so "stick" and "stone" Ogham words now use that symbol instead of an S and T.

It's a great book! I was a bit underwhelmed by their medieval book--most of the ideas weren't historically accurate or that inspiring. But, the classical kids book had a lot better info and ideas!

r ransom wrote:Wow.

That looks fantastic!

Thank you! I see so many places where I messed up a little, but I think the design ended up looking really nice, and other people probably won't notice the little flubs of paint.

Do you think I need to wait until the paint is all the way dry before applying Dorland's Wax, or could I apply it tonight?

Things that worked:

• Not gluing the spine. This made the book a bit more floppy, but it allows for the pages to open nice and flat
• Adding cords after the fact. I could do the easier Coptic stitch method, but still get the appearance of the medieval cord binding. Win! This would allow some of the older kids to customize theirs if they wanted to.
• The bland sheet fabric suddenly looks like a cloth-bound book once glued on. And, it's an open canvas. Kids could draw, paint, use crayon, etc, to decorate it. There's options for those that want more historical accuracy, and those who are less dexterous.
• Putting a piece of paper under the cover while painting. If you don't, you'll probably paint the pages (which I did))
• having pieces of paper the same size as the cover to sketch out design ideas.
• Sketching on the cloth once it was glued down. So much easier than drawing on it when it's loose!
• My kids thought the yellow ochre paint looked like leather. So, it looked like I had stained/painted leather. Nice!

Paint
• Painting books is fun! I spent way too much time doing this today. But, it was fun! If I had fun, kids probably will, too.

Things that didn't quite work:

• The boards liked to curl and do other annoying things when painted. Parchment paper and frequent pressing under heavy books fixed that, but it was still sub-par. Having to press so many books at school could get tricky. I could probably press them one on top of each other with parchment paper between books and under the covers, but, still tricky
• My green watercolor was very thick, but probably should have had more gum arabic or honey or something, because it sometimes chipped off.
• I used a small section of Elmers glue before switching to gelatin. The watercolor was a bit funky in that area, and didn't "stick" as well as in other areas. But, it wasn't anything too hard to overcome.
• Watercolor paints bleed, especially if you don't wait between colors. And that makes sadness!

Things I wonder:

Will stick on jewels stick to crayon wax or Dorland's Wax? I have a feeling they won't...

I did some more experimenting yesterday and today. To make it easier on myself, I'm describing what I did in the captions.

I went looking for ways to make fabric look like leather, and I saw some stuff about using wax. This reminded me of how encaustic wax was mixed with pigment to paint things in a relatively water-resistant and durable way. Hot colored wax + kids seemed like a bad idea. And encaustic wax is pretty expensive.

Then I had an epiphany! What's pigment + wax? Crayons!

So, I got out my (kids') good crayons and tried coloring them. It's decent. It takes a few layers and pushing hard to get the color in, and it's hard to do when the fabric is flopping around. But, if it's glued to a cover, that wouldn't be a problem.

But, what if kids want to add detail? Crayons aren't good for detail. But, wait! There's colored pencils. They're also wax based. I used my prismacolors, because they're nicer. And, yes, you can add detail on top of the other colors--even white on brown!

Good idea about the chicken feed bags! I use Scratch & Peck chicken feed, and it comes in 3 layers of paper. I actually have a bunch saved up, because I use them for smothering weeds.

I do wonder if the paper will be too stiff, without enough give for book covering. Leather has a slight amount of give. Cotton sheet has a little give, too (not much, though). But paper bags don't really. Maybe by doing all the wrinkling, it would make it more fabric like?