If you've arrived here looking for handmade Kindle sleeves, foiled literary bookmarks, handbound books, bookish gifts, bookmarks for readers, or small handmade businesses, welcome. I love an SEO keyterm. It’s like my whole thing, honestly. Real people obviously talk like this.
One of my goals this year is to start selling my handmade Kindle sleeves, handbound books, and foiled literary bookmarks at local craft fairs and makers' markets.
Which meant I needed a display.
Stage One: Optimism
The display arrived as plain plywood. No problem, I thought. I'll give it a quick paint and it'll be great.
Lock in, everyone.
Stage Two: Confidence
A coat of white primer. Looking good. Exactly as planned.
I am an artist's artist and everyone should cower in terror at the sheer weight of my creativity.
Stage Three: Oh No
Next came a grey base coat.
Or rather, several grey base coats, because the first one looked like I'd applied it with a damp sponge and blind optimism.
It was streaky. It was patchy. It was insipid. It made me cry.
Still, I persisted.
Stage Four: Complete Despair
Then came the textured stone spray.
In my head, this was the magical moment where everything transformed into convincing medieval masonry. What happened instead was a blast from the past.
When I was at school (more years ago than I'd like to admit), we had a row of temporary outdoor classrooms that had apparently been "temporary" since at least the 1980s.
You could tell.
They smelled of damp and broken dreams, and were where enthusiasm for long division went to die. The display looked exactly like one of those. A pebble-dashed educational bunker.
(I'd make a joke about getting told off for not paying attention, but I was the teacher's pet to end all teacher's pets. Could I pretend otherwise? Probably. But radical honesty is important in this sort of storytelling.)
At this point I'd spent two full days working on the thing, as well as enough money on paint that abandoning the project no longer felt financially responsible. The hope of it turning out well was a long-discarded memory. But I am nothing if not stubborn.
Stage Five: Oh. It's Fine Actually.
Then I added a dark wash. Suddenly, it was fine.
The paint settled into all the little crevices, creating shadows and depth where previously there had only been... educational infrastructure.
I added shields featuring my dragon logo, painted in some extra shadows around the stonework, and somehow - despite everything - there stood a little medieval tower, almost exactly as I'd imagined it.
Is it the best thing anyone's ever made? Probably not. But if someone spots it from the other side of a village hall and thinks, "Oh, that's a little castle," I'll consider that an overwhelming success. As long as they don’t laugh outright in my face, I’ve won.
Trust the Process
I think this happens with almost every creative project.
Whether I'm making handmade Kindle sleeves, binding a classic novel, designing printable typesets for bookbinders, foiling literary bookmarks, or apparently painting tiny towers, there's always a point where everything looks significantly worse than when you started.
The trick is recognising that you're often only halfway through. The ugly stage isn't the finished stage.
Ready for Market
The finished tower will be displaying my collection of foiled literary bookmarks, alongside my handmade Kindle sleeves, handbound books, and other bookish gifts, hopefully at local craft fairs and artisan markets very soon.
The hard part - convincing spray paint to stop looking like a Year 7 mobile classroom - is apparently behind me. Blessed be.
Added some process photos below - excuse the messy desk, I'm an artiste you know.
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