Artist Spotlight: Part Eighty-Two

Remember that awesome book I won?  Well, it's time to tell you some more about her, Andrea of Blue Highways.

She lives with her husband and boxer dog in northeast Ohio, and she does book binding and art full time!  An avid reader, she's always loved books, and now she makes some of the most beautiful ones I've ever seen.

She loves working with different fabrics and papers, and all different types of closures.

She also loves to try different binding techniques, each of which is gorgeous.

Heck, even the innards of her books are beautiful.

So why the name Blue Highways?  According to Andrea, old road maps used to have the back roads, those less traveled, printed in blue.  Those are the roads preferred by her.

Since she also encourages customers to contact her for custom items, working with them on size, fabric, binding, page count, type of paper, and more, be sure to check out her blog for ideas.

So there's this chick...

Andrea, from northeastern Ohio.  I met her at the Handmade Artists Forum, which I've written about here several times.  Andrea herself is an amazingly talented bookbinder who has a shop, Blue Highways.

I've been coveting her hand bound books for quite a while now, and I finally own one!  She was creative and generous enough to start a contest at HAF, involving the Handmade Highlights, with one of her own books as the prize!  I created a Highlight based on my favorite song, Castle Walls by Styx, and had the most commenters, so I won my choice of one of her gorgeous mini journals.

I got it on Saturday and was so enamoured with it that I had to share.  First, her packaging is terrific; each book is wrapped in vintage newspaper with twine.  The newspaper around my book was from 1963 and very interesting to read.

Also included with the book was a pretty notecard with a message to me and a book thong, also made by Andrea.  It was blue cord with blue glass beads, my favorite color!  I knew that Andrea included a complimentary book thong with every book she sold, but had no idea I'd be getting one with a book I'd won.  I thought that was just really sweet.

Once I unwrapped the book, I got to see the fabric I'd chosen in person, these awesome batik sea turtles, of course in blue.

The book's closure is a blue ribbon with dark blue beads on the ends.  The flyleaf is fun and also sea-themed, with pictures of urchins and shells.

The binding, though, is what boggles my mind the most.  The book is hand-threaded in this lovely pattern of thread, that I think is the most beautiful thing.

The care and expertise she puts into these books is evident from front to back.  I'm so glad I got it, and know I'll be buying more in the future.