Another Day, Another Post!

The craft fair at Xap’s office yesterday went pretty well. Lower total sales than the Fremd HS craft fair, but the whole thing was only 2 hours long and the cost was much lower, so I think that makes it the more profitable of the two. And Xap and I had homemade tamales (that another pair of her co-workers were selling) for lunch, homemade cookies for dessert, and I had the last two tamales for lunch today. 

We had one 6’ table yesterday, and I had a bright idea and put the belt bins on their sides along the back edge as a riser (with a tablecloth). That didn’t technically add horizontal display space, but it meant that things on the riser weren’t hidden by things in front of them. And I tucked the cash box and my iWhatsit in one of said bins, for extra clever. The nice thing is that we can do the riser trick with the belt bins even with belts in them. 

Since I only used short gridwall, we got everything in and out in one handtruck load. Which was good, as it was hecking cold outside. 

After a stop at the grocery store on the way home, I started poking at making booklets with fabric covers. I got the parts for two made, doing the covers two slightly different ways. The first one I tried fusing the fabric using Wonder-Under. I’m not sure if the stuff is finicky, or I was just at the very bottom of the learning curve. The fabric I used is light-colored, and so the turn-in under the green cardstock flyleaf shows slightly, and still required some gluing (or would have required placement of additional Wonder-Under). 

The second one I folded the fabric around a piece of cardstock, gluing down the turn-ins, and then glued down the flyleaf sheet (also cardstock). The turn-ins don’t show through, and the double layer of cardstock is stiffer than the first one. It didn’t require much more fussing about than the first one, and no use of iron, trim, fold, iron some more, so I think I’ll probably proceed with some variation of that process. I’m thinking of adding some spray starch, and going with text-weight paper instead of cover-weight for the interior sheet, both of which should help me get better corners.

The two covers dried under weights last night, and looked decent this morning. I’d also made the interiors last night. The two covers only used one fat quarter of fabric. I’ve also got an idea for adding a center fold reinforcement/bookmark. 

Today I ordered a ream of cream-colored 11” x 17” cardstock so I can make covers for grid paper interiors I bought, and other things where I want/need bigger than 8-1/2” x 11” heavy paper. I also ordered lined interiors in two sizes. I suspect that I might have sold some more books at the craft shows if the pages were lined rather than blank. So I’ll do that. And the cost to buy them printed, folded, and trimmed is quite reasonable.  

This evening I made the covers and interiors (folding and collating) for two more booklets. These have paper covers. The paper I used has a light-colored background, and I used dark brown cardstock for the cover lining/reinforcement, so I tucked a piece of plain printer paper into the covers, so the foldovers are between the printer paper and cardstock.