A few weeks ago, I volunteered to help and participate in my work’s art show. The theme was showcasing women. I choose to exhibit a piece that I had created back in 2018. I felt that it provided a nice way to start a conversation about women’s struggles, both in the past and currently.
It was a nice time opening the floor to discussion and bringing awareness to others of this culture that I have the honor to be a part of.
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I’ll have to work on updating the site overall so please keep in mind that some of the information might be out of date until I’m able to address everything.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.
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*~
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:
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*~
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
Copernicus by Szukalski (print)
The New Year has brought forth some fascinating art and artists. While perusing through Netflix, I stumbled across a documentary about Stanislav Szukalski. He was a troubled soul, had a traumatic (and dramatic) past, was extremely narcissistic, held some fanatical beliefs and extremely questionable political views and was “recently” rediscovered. If you’re interested in checking out the film, it’s titled “Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski”
There is an interesting article HERE reviewing the film.
His tragic tale and struggle did indeed carry strongly into his work and the torment and twisted figures resonated with my soul. I would highly recommend checking him out.
Here are a few of his works:
Check this guy out. And the Netflix documentary as well.
~*Twigg*~
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.)
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.
I’ll be sure to update you with my progress and post photos of the finished product!
-Twigg
I’ve always been interested in books and their construction, even at an early age. I remember in high school (back in the mid/late 90’s) I carefully studied various books I had on hand to try and identify the steps needed to take on such a task. This was prior to the internet folks!
With my meager supplies – a regular sewing needle, thread and some general all purpose printing paper – I endeavored to stitch the individual pages together. I then glued them inside a cardboard cover overlaid with fabric then attached some accent paper to the front and back of the book.
The results were needless to say messy and not near the professional quality of an experienced and knowledgeable crafts-person. However for having figured it out all on my own, I feel that I did a fairly decent job. Unfortunately that project has long since disappeared, probably lost in the multiple moves over the years, but the memory of that project stayed with me.
I had recently been printing and tea staining “cliff notes” for my current Dungeons & Dragons character. Keeping these easy to reference notes in a binder I feel is much more helpful than constantly flipping through and bookmarking all of the pages I needed to constantly look at in the player’s manual during game play. As a Tiefling Warlock, a spell book should have all of the necessary information readily on hand and available at the flick of a tail.
My crafty mind wanted to take this to the next level of creativity and dedication. Why not create an actual spell book, I thought! The memory of my younger self crashed headlong into the current and more knowledgeable self, now with access to the world wide web. I was unstoppable. Diving headlong into this new task, I conducted some research, gathered the basic tools and supplies needed and secluded myself for several days.
tea stained paged, folded into signatures
In the kitchen, I brewed a massive amount of tea and cranked out a large amount of plain/unprinted tea-stained pages, two at a time. This took several evenings. Next the glue and supplies arrived and after a test run, realized that regular, thinner sewing thread was much preferable to the thicker, waxed cord that was provided in my bookbinders kit. It worked out as the red thread I already had perfectly accented the color scheme I had in mind.
After appreciating the crinkly paper much like a cat enjoys a paper bag, I folded the pages into “signatures”. Prior to sewing them, I hand wrote all of my character’s current notes making sure to carefully space out how many blank pages to leave between sections to add additional notes for the future. I did this with two of my favorite fountain pens (Lamy LX limited edition gold with EF nib and my TWSBI mini with a 1.1 mm stub nib – for section titles; ink: Diamine “Oxblood”). No penciled in guide lines were added; I did this all by eye. I also added a few artistic flourishes/images to break up the text and add to the creepiness of the book.
Once the signatures were sewn, I took inspiration from a recent reddit post on r/Antiques where someone posted an image of a book from the 1800’s that used an old map for the reinforcement. How cool is that? Think of the history; these guys used whatever they had on hand. I followed in their footsteps and re-purposed some discarded/old pages from my old binder notes to reinforce my “text block”
Photo credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Antiques/comments/8r4vi1/old_1840s_book_with_a_map_in_the_binding/
“Headbands” (not the type you tie your hair up with) became an obsession. These are optional accent pieces of fabric that are attached the top and bottom of the book between the cover and the “text block” to prevent dust from settling down in the spine while shelved. In true Twigg form, I wanted a very specific style and color scheme. Unable to find a local source, I found some old ribbon and proceeded to sew my own. There wasn’t a great deal of information online about how to do this; most were pre-made or actually stitched to the “text block” itself. It wasn’t perfect, but I achieved my goal.
After attaching my homemade “headbands” I immediately realized this should’ve been done prior to adding the “text block” reinforcement. Oh well! You live, you learn. Turns out it wasn’t that big of a deal and you really don’t even notice this on the finished project.
I picked up some suede-like scrap material at Joanns to keep with the whole creepy tactile theme. Utilizing some thick cardstock I already had on hand, I glued the fabric down. In retrospect, I will plan on using a more sturdy material as the heavy card is just a little too flexible for my tastes. (Fun fact: It was a good thing I invested in the large glue bottle. You go through that stuff like crazy!) Next I cut/trimmed some red accent paper for inside front and back of the book. This paper also has a rather strange, soft feel to it. I honestly can’t explain it but it’s neat!
The final touches were attaching metal accent corners, painting and gluing an applique to the upper/center cover and finished it off with a handmade 1” glass eye.
All in all I’m very happy with the end result. I wish I could go back in time and show my younger self what I can look forward to! I can’t wait to make my next book.
Be crafty folks! It’s a wonderful world out there. Make it your own.
~*Twigg*~
click on the images in the Gallery below for full size view and info.
This past weekend I went out on an antiquing adventure with my significant other and our friends. Scouring stores for holiday gifts early in the year has always proven to be a successful move on my part and has saved us from the last minute rush. Additionally it’s like attending a museum… but you actually get to touch things! I love wondering about the history of these objects; who did they belong to, what history have they “seen”, etc.
This weekend I was completely surprised by a rather fortuitous find. Looking up and over my right shoulder, hidden upon a dimly lit shelf just over my head was this lurking treasure. Quickly I snatched it up and hugged it (like a normal person would do). With tears in my eyes, I timidly looked at the price tag, wondering for that fraction of a second if I would be paying an exorbitant amount for this seemingly simple and totally random item. To my astonishment it was marked down to only $2! Needless to say I was beside myself. It was destiny.
“Twigg: 50th Family Reunion 1996”
A little background. For all intensive purposes my name is Twigg (with two g’s). Everyone calls me Twigg; my mother, co-workers, bosses, friends…everyone. The majority of my friends surprisingly don’t know my given name, which is always hilarious when I forgot and they make a face when they randomly realize.
About 10 years ago, I started volunteering for local pirate festivals. Think Renaissance Festivals but with pirates. We set up encampments, give historical presentations as well as perform various choreographed fights. It’s great fun and I’ve found some great friends and family through these events.
My first year I was tasked with having to come up with a “pirate name”. I was all of 110 lbs. back then and the smallest one in our crew.
During a break, I threw out some ideas until I mentioned “Twigg” and thinking myself witty at the time, proudly followed it up with “but with two g’s ‘cause pirates can’t spell.” The organizer of the event who was standing just a couple of feet next to me overheard me. Upon first glance, he looks like a hulking man that you wouldn’t mess with (which is true) but he has a heart of gold. He turned away from his conversation, pointed to me and boldly declared, “You’re name is Twigg” and turned to continue his conversation as if nothing had happened. Needless to say it has stuck and I’m forever thankful.
I’m in the back row, third from the left w/ the black tricorn hat and dark shirt.
Fast forward 3 years. My aunt was conducting some family history research and left a pile of documents with my mother. While browsing through folders of loose leaf pages of information, I stumbled across a familiar name. Twigg, spelled exactly the same! It was indeed my family last name some number of generations back on my mother’s side. It was destiny yet again.
Life is strange. It throws you some curve balls to be sure. Some are not as kind or forgiving as others however there are those odd chance occurrences that are strangely serendipitous. Even more so when they are recurring.
Apparently my long lost relatives are painters as well as evident by this pitcher. Who knew!
“Long Live Paint”
~*Twigg*~
Hello everyone,
It’s been a while. There are quite a few things in the works in the background, including some photos of new works to be published here soon.
Tomorrow, Tue Jan 23 is National Handwriting Day! Make sure you scope out and get in on those line deals and give-aways.
I also was lucky enough to score a vintage Sheaffer Snorkel pen for my mother for a Holiday gift. She admired mine so much I just had to get her a matching one. I appreciate that hers is slightly older than mine and of a slightly different design (notice the lack of white dot on hers!).
Make sure to keep writing and enjoy those fountain pens friends!
-“Long Live Paint”
~*Twigg*~
Buer Studio 