How About Orange featured a custom box and envelope template generator the other day. You give it the width, height and length of the box you want to make, and it spits out a PDF template that you can print and cutout. And added bonus is that the PDF is editable in Illustrator.
I ran across this gauge the other day on Etsy — it “holds constant the Golden Ratio and takes the math out of creating pleasingly proportioned Art and Craft items.”
If you don’t know about the golden ratio (sometimes called golden section), from Wikipedia:
At least since the 20th century, many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio—especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratio—believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing.
There are directions for making one yourself here, as well as a printable transparency or golden ratio ruler that “to see if its design is based on the golden section.”
About a month ago, I splurged and bought a cutting plotter — it cuts and scores shapes one has designed in Illustrator. I’ve wanted to make a few pop-up books, but all the hand-cutting has been a big deterrent.
I’ve spent the past several weeks learning the foibles of the machine. My first “pop-up” was a simple papercut to illustrate one of my haiku — that’s it to the left.
When I was designing To a Friend Going Blind, I wanted to use a sewing measuring tape for the binding. A conventional measuring tape, bought from a sewing supply store, was too thick and too expensive for an edition of 50. Then somewhere I found rolls of tape that looked like a measuring tape. (As a binding it was strong, but a pain to prepare — I had to unroll the tape and apply it to tissue paper first as it had adhesive on the back, then cut the blank top off by hand.) When I packed up my studio in December, I found 1/2 a roll, and carted it here to Santa Fe, although I’m not sure why.
When I found that 1/2 roll, I had already packed up my copy of the finished book, so I couldn’t go back and look at it. And of course I quickly forgot that I wanted to look at it again… until the other day when I read an article in Salon called “The craft that consumed me” where the author mentions making duct tape wallets and says “Check out TapeBrothers.com, which features an extraordinary selection, even my most-loathed pattern of all time after perhaps animal print anything: camouflage.” So I did. The measuring tape tape is filed under “Artist Tapes.” Seems like a good resource to know about. Then I went off and found my copy of To a Friend Going Blind and re-read the poem with a cup of tea.
The other day I followed a link to Philip Gallo’s blog and spent a wonderful hour reading the posts. Gallo is a letterpress printer and poet in Minneapolis. That’s his broadside to the left (see the post about it here — it’s about daffodils, printed on daffodil embellished paper, and with a subtle ff in the background). He doesn’t write often, and the posts vary widely, from writing poetry, to typesetting 40 years ago, to a poem called Imagine You Are A Craftsman to hand-setting mouse type. And a few of them are handy letterpress printing tricks:
When I wrote recently about a nifty leather tool roll-up, Robert asked “I’m curious about which tools you have in your roll up.” Here’s my answer — let me know what you use yours for in the comments below…
My studio is a 10-minute drive from my house, so I originally stocked my roll-up with tools I didn’t want to duplicate for both home and studio. My japanese screw punch, a good glue brush, a micro spatula. I also included some linen thread, a couple of needles, scissors, a knitting needle (for scoring paper), a bone folder, an xacto knife and extra blades, an awl and a glue stick.
After a time, I realized I was using the roll-up more for trips to SFCB, where I teach an introduction to the platen press class as well as make my photo polymer plates and use the spiral binding equipment. I swapped the screw punch and glue brush for things I could never count on finding at the book center — several small screw drivers (flat & philips head) to adjust the presses, a black sharpie pen to write on the back of plate material, small binder clips to fix the plate maker, and a small metal ruler. Later I added a small pad of post-its (good for notes and labeling) and several pencils (the center mysteriously has only pens), and safety pins (although I can’t remember why!)