A Much Needed Overhaul

Posted on March 3, 2025 by twiggmatheney

I’ve been gone for…well, a long time! And a lot has happened. My computer died and a lost 99.9% of files. Fortunately a good friend of mine built a new PC for me so I’m up and running again. I hope to get back into updating here!

Related to our interests, I attended the annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair this weekend and finally acquired the holy grail of my collection. A velum covered book from 1613! I’m still beside myself about this find. The pricing was reasonable and the condition is one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

I’ll have to work on updating the site overall so please keep in mind that some of the information might be out of date until I’m able to address everything.

That’s all I have for now.

It’s been too long…

Posted on October 26, 2020 by twiggmatheney

Funny how life gets away from you, how time flies and how easy it is to just loose track of everything. Especially given the state of the world these days. I’ve realized that I’ve been forgetting to take photos of the books I’ve been working on so here’s an update of some of my recent commissions:

First off: A wonderful custom order for a good LARP friend…

The cover is professional grade bookcloth. I love working with this stuff! The cover art is all hand tooled by me with gold leaf. The moon design is a tool I had custom made by Brien Beidler and it’s absolutely stunning. Complementing hand-marbled paper (purchased, I did not make it) was added to the inside cover.

Next up another LARP commission:

You can really tell the difference the lighting makes. The top and middle photos best represent the true deep royal blue of this bookcloth cover. Hand tooled by me with silver leaf and I’ve added some fun silver metal corners on the front and back edges. (And yes, I forgot to take a photo of the whole book when I was done! Something I definitely need to work on making sure I do moving forward.)

I’m thankful for my partner in gifting me this splendid English finishing stove! Without it I was attempting to heat my tools on our kitchen stove, almost ruining one of the tools in the process. Now I can safely and easily make decorative embellishments! (I’m actually pondering the idea of adding some gold detailing to one of my belts – TBD.)

I’ve also been working on an assortment of other random mini-projects as well, including this painting I’m gifting to a new friend:

Happy Halloween everyone! Please stay safe and I hope to post more updates regularly.

~*Twigg*~

The Large Book of Hours

Posted on June 11, 2019 by twiggmatheney

Hello everyone,

It’s been a hot minute! Literally. It’s very warm where I am currently located.

I’ve back at work on my very large tome. It had taken me months to hand tea stain the individual pages and air dry them on my meager clothing drying rack, but it was well worth it. I had since bound the signatures into a text block and have cut the cover boards.

And thus it has sat untouched for some time. A few things influenced the delay in my progress. One of which was deciding on the cover medium. I’ve decided on leather however it’s a daunting task as I’ve never utilized leather for a cover before. Much less for anything other than simple craft projects. In an ideal world, I’d love to acquire a few brass leather tools to do some blind tooling with gold on the cover. However they are quite expensive. So much so that many collections are passed down from generation to generation. Honestly I often find myself day dreaming of being an apprentice at some small workshop overseas, surrounded by these stunning tools, supplies …and knowledge! But I digress. For now, a simple black leather (or perhaps this tawny light beige) will suffice. I’ve been eyeing some single tools online but I’ll try and think of other creative ways to accomplish this tooling task.

In the meantime, I went to cut the paper for the end pages last night. And surprise surprise… my book it too big. #bigbookproblems So now I have to acquire two matching sheets of marbled paper (instead of my usual plan of being able to utilize one sheet for both front and back end pages). I’ve been eyeing Jemma Lewis Marbling & Design via Instagram for some time now and absolutely love their designs. My plan is to reach out and inquire about a custom order so we’ll see.

What are you going to do with that large book when you’re done with it? I’ve been asked this by many folks and ask the same of myself every time I admire it. At first I was going to utilize it for my LARP character and include 3 research sections: Elixirs, Myth & Lore and Astrology. However, last night after getting lost yet again down the rabbit hole of Illuminated Manuscripts, I had a grand idea: A Vampire Book of Hours. Yes, I said it. This will take an extensive amount of planning and many Many months of work however I think it would be beyond epic once complete. (I have inadvertently gone backwards though as the pages should be completed/decorated prior to being bound however… I’ll wing it.)

This morning, I discovered this stunning book of hours commonly referred to as the “Morgan Black Hours“. The black background is completely atypical of any illuminated manuscript I’ve ever seen and absolutely breathtaking:

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Anywho, that’s all I have for now. I will do my best to update you on my progress regarding this and any other rando projects I am working on.

Long live paint!

~*Twigg*~

Bookbinding update

Posted on February 26, 2019 by twiggmatheney

I keep forgetting to post photos of my bookbinding progress and projects. I’ve been so busy making books, I haven’t been posting updates! Check out my work thus far – let me know if you’re interested in a commission!

The Yellow rainbow – custom order

Dresden Stormbreaker – custom order

Little Black Book

Misc

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Bookbinding returns!

Posted on November 9, 2018 by twiggmatheney

The bookbinding bug bites again.

Iinspired by a little snippit I found via Pinterest, I just had to make my current D&D character’s book.

The inspiration:

The character:

Bob, the enchanter is…. well, he’s a special/colorful character and I love him. He’s a 43 year old human wizard. He grew up in Waterdeep and was contacted by Mohana (my very first character I ever played and subsequently all of the characters I have created are in some fashion “related” to him) to fund – and fuel – Bob’s arcane interests. Bob works at Waterdeep’s local cemetery, taking pride in his work and necromancy knowledge, using his skills to keep the undead population under control. He fancies himself the “shepard of the dead”. He’s socially awkward, has a familiar named Sir William – a tiny goat.

(Yes, I know. I put in a significant amount of work into the backstory of my characters. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me.)

Bob

The book:

Initially I had printed Bob’s book and put everything in a 3-ring binder. Recently I found out that some of the needed information was missing. So I got to thinking. Make a new wizard spell book and hand write everything in it as the campaign progresses. It’s smaller and more compact than the 3-ring binder and much, much lighter. There will be no excess pages that I have to flip through and spells/feats/notes will be at the ready whenever they are needed.

I went with a 90’s holographic theme initially. Now I’m incorporating a rainbow of pages (yes, there are 128) in a 5.5 by 7 inch size (yes, I know the inspiring photo above said 5×7 but I’m fudging it a bit to allow for stitching and for my own sanity; do you know how difficult and time consuming it can be to accurately cut this many pages to size by hand?)

Below are the signatures, stitched with rainbow thread. Also pictured (right) are the handmade headbands that I have yet to cut down to size and adhere to the text block. I plan on re purposing the holographic paper I currently have gracing the cover of the 3-ring binder and utilizing it for the endpapers. Once this book has been completely constructed, I will hand write (with a fountain pen of course!) all of the information within it’s pages.