Crown Town's Nikki of Not Made In China

Charlotte is a great city and one of my favorite things about having moved here the past few months is the quality of artists and lack of politics. There's a huge range from casual dabbler/consumer of the craft all the way up to established artists making a cool six figures a year.
One of the gifts this has given me is the ability to view artists who work in different medium besides fabric and jewelry. Once a month, on the last Thursday of the month, we all get together and swap ideas and projects. This is past month it was Japanese book binding by Nikki Mueller and it was a blast.
I've met Nikki a couple of months ago at the NoDa artist market where she had these hilarious cards and printed sayings on various mediums. The kind of quirky smart saying that leave you laughing a little which is always good in a big crowd. I hope to see her back in September at the next show.
Nikki put together wonderful book zines with instructions. Basically, if you can do a running stitch, have thread, hammer, and nail...you can make your own one of a kind book. I'll be using this for my own personal childhood cookbooks for Christmas. It's always hard to create one of a kind family gifts that can stretch to 60-70 people (Catholic people, Catholic) without losing weeks of your life and a great deal of your sanity.
Anyways, the instructions are fairly simple and you can check out everything at her facebook page: Not Made in China or blog. Mine is the orange birds in the upper left. Now, if I can just figure out how to take pictures on that level.

All pictures have been reprinted with permission of the artist. If you would like to come to the next monthly artist meeting, please check out the Charlotte Crown Town blog or add yourself to the facebook page.