About Crafty Bibliophile
“The Friends of the Library Annual Booksale is the best recycling event in the whole city! The Friends make money for the library, and everybody gets to go home happy with all the books they’ve been wanting to read, and ready to donate them back as soon as they are done, making it an endless circle of Community Goodness.”
I sometimes answer email at UseThoseBooksUp@gmail.com
If you are interested in being contacted every time I post some new project or content, please email me to let me know, and I will try to make it happen, without sharing your email with anyone else, of course… it’s just that I haven’t figured out yet how to create an contact list yet on Squarespace…
clockwise from top left: Book wreath, book snowman, book earrings, image printed on text, Faux succulents in book planter, spiral book rosettes, accordion fold book medallion wreath, cat template before becoming altered book
The TLA Connection:: “Rags to Riches: Recycling Books for Fun, Fashion, and… Furniture?”
May 28, 2019 Written By Julia Ousley
Ever since I attended the TALL Texans Retreat, a special week-long training for future leaders of the Texas Library Association (TLA), in 2006, I’ve been presenting programs at the TLA annual conference under the sponsorship of the Library Friends Trustees and Advocates Round Table (LiFTA), the one part of the Texas Library Association that is for civilians (my term for non-librarians). The annual conference is the second largest library conference in the country, second only behind the behemoth which is the AMERICAN Library Association’s annual meeting.
Neither a Librarian Nor an Artist
I am a civilian, though a longtime library board member and user, and I joined the TLA when I served as the city of New Braunfels lay-person delegate to the Alamo Area Library System, and then later as member of the advisory board for AALS, part of the Texas State Library. My college degrees are in Microbiology from Texas A&M and Medical Technology, from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, so I have no training in art or crafts.
The First “Rags to Riches: Recycling Books for Fun, Fashion, and…. Furniture?” Program
Thousands of attendees flood hundreds of conference programs every year, and many of TLA’s programs offer specialized continuing education, which the professionals need, so my first program entitled “Rags to Riches: Recycling Books for Fun, Fashion, and…. Furniture?” was a real oddity, so far off the bell curve of predictable programs that I figured only a handful of attendees would carve time from their busy conference schedules (about 10 programs of diverse appeal are offered for each time slot) to attend. Much to my surprise, and much to the satisfaction of that first year’s program committee, the room was SO packed that the host city’s (San Antonio) fire marshal put up a sign at the door forbidding any more entrance.
From Hero to Zero? I hope NOT!
It was a BIG hit, and I’ve spoken at TLA about every other year since then, presenting at almost all of the conference venues except Dallas, since it’s the farthest for me to lug all my samples and examples of crafty bibliophilic goodness. Every time I’m slated to present, I wonder if interest in what I do with books will have run its course, that I will be standing in front of an empty room, but every time (so FAR), my fears prove to be groundless, and another generation of engaged bibliophiles are launched to find new and wonderful ways to craft objects of beauty and usefulness.
As long as people find my programs helpful, I would like to keep doing them.
TLA Annual Conferences 2020 and 2021
Not everything traces back to the TALL Texans Library Leaders Training Retreat I attended in 2006, but my invitation to come and speak again for TLA in 2020, scheduled for Houston’s George Brown Convention Center, NOT one of my closer convention sites in San Antonio and Austin, traces directly back to that retreat.
Some of my classmates for that retreat have become Big Kahunas in TLA, including Cecilia Barham, who was elected president of the Association and whose major projects included the conference of 2020, and one of her program committee (ProCo) lieutenants was Tine Walczyk, another of my 2006 TALL compatriots.
I hadn’t planned on speaking this year after leading a complicated 4 hour long hands-on pre-conference last year, at the Austin conference site, and my usual sponsoring group, LiFTA (Library Friends, Trustees, and Advocates Round Table) offered me the year off. But Tine of the Pro-Co called and drafted me and I was happy to accommodate and indoctrinate another library audience with the delights of new ways to re-purpose books (and other items).
Making Lemonade Out of Lemons- Lessons from 2020
Little did we know that the COVID-19 virus would suspend all normal activities in 2020, the TLA annual conference went virtual, and my program wound up as a casualty, deemed Non-Essential. That was OK with me, and the extra time made it possible to reorganize my talk and record it for 2021 in a completely new iteration as “Rags to Riches: Recycling Books for Fun, Fashion, and …Furniture- The HOLIDAY EDITION”, which I presented virtually with a live Q&A afterwards. There was a focus on seasonal decor as well as gifts for everything from Valentines Day completely around the calendar, including banners, beads, weddings, and ways to win at book repurposing.
But I really NEEDED to get this website up and running ASAP.