Bitey Books

Due to my love of upcycling I have a propensity for hoarding anything that might potentially, perhaps one day, and possibly only in some alternate reality, have even have the slightest chance of being repurposed. I love to experiment with any type of medium that I come across for a good price (or better yet, free). In my case I guess you could say: UNnecessity is the mother of invention. At least, that is how the first of my Bitey Books were born: from an excess of material, an excess of free time, and a complete lack of focus.

The seeds of these creations were planted long before their form materialized in my head. Since the idea of buying new leather hides was far from my frugal nature, I had been thrifting for leather coats in the hopes that I would one day have a sewing machine that could muster the force to punch through such a material and make renaissance style leather pouches. Even with a leather needle installed in the machine, I was getting nowhere. Still, I collected every affordable used coat I could find in preparation for the day it could finally happen.

Usually I could find leather coats for $5.99 each: the standard price for all coats carried at the local big-chain donation-based resale shop. Sometimes in the summer I would get lucky at yard sales and people would just want them gone and only request a couple dollars in return. I do feel it necessary to point out the majority of the coats I was finding were unlikely to ever be worn again and it felt good to be saving them from potentially being tossed in the trash. They would almost always have damage of some sort: rips, holes, burns, stains; or they'd be so out of fashion you'd look at them and wonder: "what was that entire decade thinking?!"

Home I'd return with my spoils. On good days it could be a whole garbage bag full or a couple trench coats with nice big squares of material! I'd let a pile accumulate, then when I decided I needed a pajama and movie day I'd break out a fresh box of caffeinated beverages and my most comfortable pair of scissors.

I would sit watching movies and cutting the coats into useable material for hours at a time. I was a one woman assembly line! Before I'd even touch the leather, first I'd cut the buttons off and, of course, save them for some other project.

Then I'd trim along the entire outer edge seams; snipping a quarter inch from the edge of each cuff, all around the topstitched edges of the rest of the coat, and finally, removing the collar. If I did it properly, I could easily pull the lining away from the leather. If not, some additional scissor finesse could be required, but eventually I'd be left with a separate shell and liner.

After de-lining the stack, I would go back and cut all the shells into flat pieces. This was the quick and satisfying part as I'd end up with five fairly uniform pieces from each coat: left and right front panels, two sleeves, and the back, which could then be folded and neatly stacked. I'd sort my stack by color and run my finger down it with pride. Though most of it was black or shades of brown, there were a fair amount of reds and greens. Any other shade was a precious rarity.

My hoard grew quickly, mostly because my usage was slow... near non-existent, really. I tried several more times to sew through the leather, but my sewing machine was unable to consistently stitch through the thickness of the material. Over time, I became frustrated and moved on to other projects and ideas with that special sort of distractedness that happens every time new inspiration strikes a crafter's brain.

A couple years would pass, then one day my husband proposed to me by putting the engagement ring inside a monster box he had commissioned. He held the tiny box covered in leather with eyes and teeth, and when he opened it and popped "the question", the ring was inside its "mouth". I loved it!

After the excitement of the proposal was a few weeks behind me, and many girls would've likely been thinking about their upcoming wedding, I instead thought of my leather stash and how I could use it to create my own version of the monster box. My main concern was that I did not want to copy another artist and wanted it to be my own interpretation.

The biggest factor that made variation easy was the difference between the light leathers I had collected versus the heavy hide that had been used on the box I was gifted. The heavy leather was only glued flat on the surface of the box. Using my lighter weight leather, I was able to fold and bend it in ways that could give expressions and wrinkles to my monster's faces. I was not just covering a box, I was sculpting the material around it and the best part was I could use adhesive and not have to worry about sewing through it!

The second major choice was to use books and book shaped boxes for the majority of my creatures, rather than a standard box shape. Mostly, I used binders, journals and notebooks. Also, while I normally hate to hurt a book, at the time there was an overabundance of the 'Twilight' series floating around. I could come home with as many as three hardcover copies of 'Twilight', 'New Moon', or 'Eclipse' in the same day. They were nice thick books that were excellent for hollowing a cubby into. Others might agree that I was leaving them much improved!

Next, my monsters needed eyes and teeth. I would spend hours sculpting teeth from polymer clay and baking them so that I'd have a nice assortment to choose from when giving my creatures their chompers. I also hand painted all my eyes onto the back of glass stones that were mostly upcycled as well (having been previously used in centerpieces for wedding receptions). I'd start with the pupil and then brush streaks of color in layers, letting each layer dry before the next. Again, I let an assortment build up so that I'd have plenty of options when it came to putting it all together.

It was addictingly fun to do, and my cute little creations were well received by friends and family. I had a lot of requests to adopt my Bitey Books. A friend and his wife would even ask me to monster-ify (leaving the pages intact and readable) their entire set of Stephen King's 'Dark Tower' series. With some coaxing I did a couple small craft shows where strangers appreciated my work and purchased some, but I never jumped fully into it as a business, because then the next idea hit.

Of course I couldn't throw away the tiny scraps leftover from making my Bitey Books. They had to have a purpose. There must be something I could cut from all those remnants!

...and that was when I started making leather roses.