DIY or DIE!

Lysistrata

Carrying this idea over from the old MKO forums. 

Do you craft? sew? make messes that sometimes look kinda cool?
Show off your pics here! it's like Lusternia Pinterest!

Lysistrata

This took me a while to do >.>  I want to make a milk thingy and two matches cups. 

Aramel

This is the thread I never knew I needed until now.

Lysistrata

new shoes!

Ciaran

My DIY griefer/studying standing desk.  I wanted to mount the pipes directly to the wall, but my weird ass German building doesn't have any studs (made of cinder blocks hidden behind like 4 inches of insulation/plaster), so I had to build this weird wooden frame to mount it on.

Desk height and angle is adjustable! The laptop mount swivels also.

It's still a work in progress.  I need to stain all the wood, polish/oil the pipes and cut that strut and attach it flush with the rest of the frame.  It's functional as is though!

Aerdiya

My latest crocheting projects. Both went to friends and one now has a permanent place in my friend's office (also the horn on the first one turned out to be totally asymmetrical xD) I really wish, I had more time for crocheting since it's so calming.

Aramel

Apologies for incoming wall of text and pictures:  in addition to sewing, which I will post at some point when I find my pics again, I do some bookbinding. Bookbinding is surprisingly fun and easy - I've never bookbound anything before and these are my first forays into it. There's a lot of technical stuff that I've tried to keep to a minimum here but I always find that process pics make DIY posts more fun.

Start with printed folded-over paper, or signatures. Punch holes, evenly spaced. More experienced bookbinders use a saw but I'm too much of a wimp and worry I'll screw up my nicely printed pages, so I just punch it hole by hole. Probably my least favourite part of this.

Next up, stitch the bindings.

I experimented with gold leaf for initial letters. Gold leaf is an absolute bastard to work with because it's so thin that it breaks if you so much as touch it. I literally had to hold my breath while doing this. But the plus side of the fragility is that you can get it into all of those hair-fine lines and shapes.

The colour goes on before the gold leaf because then if you screw up, the leaf covers it up, whereas if you get ink on the leaf you're out of luck.

The traditional method is then to burnish the leaf with an agate polisher. I don't have one, but an old bracelet I dug up works just fine.

Next up we want to stamp the title into leather. The traditional method is again gold leaf, but instead of glue we use beaten egg whites. The hot stamp literally cooks the egg, which sticks the leaf to the leather. I didn't take a lot of pictures here because I was so tense.

Meanwhile, actually finishing up the binding on the book with glue and stuff, and prepping the covers:

Then the covers warped, so I decided I'd leave it a while before I tried again, and meanwhile screwed around with more gold leaf and fake illumination (yes, that is random snippets of Lord of the Rings poems printed in the style of a medieval European book of hours.)

Full disclosure: I cannot draw. All the lineart is based off of extant medieval manuscripts, coloured in by hand and then touched up with gold/silver. Some of it is gold leaf and some of it is ink.

Rancoura

How did I not know this existed in the modern world as a hobby. That is absolutely gorgeous work, @Aramel. Is the text itself handwritten, or printed through other means?

Aramel

@Rancoura There's a flourishing online community of hobbyists who geek out over paper! It's great.

The text is printed on a normal laser printer, though with short-grain paper - paper is directional and will fold well in one direction and not well in the perpendicular direction, so this is basically paper that's been cut the other way so as to fold nicely if you make it a booklet.

It actually is possible to handwrite blackletter with the right type of nib, which I have, but I wasn't ready to go quite that medieval, since I screw up the leafing a lot (not shown here: failed attempts) and it would have been deeply frustrating to mess up a handwritten page. Medieval scribes must literally have had the patience of saints.

Lysistrata

Finally got this coat done. I hope people can see the details as it's all black 

Lysistrata

Rancoura

@Lysistrata So pretty! Do want. Love the corset touch at the back!

Rancoura

I wish I had something to contribute to this thread. I used to make jewellery out of spare bits, but nothing I'm overly fond of now. I mean, I do have a makeshift wild-staff that I made for a movie trailer I was shooting for a class, but it is literally just a long wooden pole with twigs and dried vines tied to it with twine.

Breandryn

@aramel - one of my best pals is a professional bookbinder. She's had exhibits of her creative work and also does restorations on old manuscripts. There are real life guilds for that stuff! She owns a printing press what! So cool. I'm happy to connect you two if you want - she's always excited to meet more bookbinders.