DIY Bookbinding Video in sisterMAG

Doublespread in sisterMAG

One of our favourite projects and ideas of this sisterMAG was the beginning of our new video series: “Bookbinding 101 with sisterMAG”. The first video and book project was done in a collaboration with many different and very talented partners: ellijot.de and agentur gretchen.

The illustration on the cover was exclusively drawn and done for sisterMAG by illustrator Elisabeth Weber from ellijot.de. We came up with a saying we all liked and which (in our opinion) perfectly shows the mindset of sisterMAG: “Tutto il mondo è paese” – “The whole world is a village” (Tweet this saying right now). Especially through technology and the digital possibilities, the world really seems just like a village anymore. Just now tweeting to friends in France and the Netherlands and exchanging thoughts about Berlin coffeeshops (@joelix and @currystrumpet :)
Elisabeth did a wonderful Lettering, which you can directly download here and use as your cover.

Lettering from Elisabeth Weber for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialLettering from Elisabeth Weber for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialLettering from Elisabeth Weber for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialLettering from Elisabeth Weber for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialLettering from Elisabeth Weber for sisterMAG Bookbinding Tutorial

In order to show you how to make such a neon yellow book, we asked a very cool Berlin company to help us: agentur gretchen, who do film and video productions for companies or events. On a sunny Berlin afternoon, the whole team of cameraman Claus and assistant Julia as well as our very own Victoria (who works as editor for agentur gretchen) came by and we produced this lovely little video you can see above.

Video Shoot for sisterMAG Bookbinding Tutorial

We had a lot of fun, but I have to say: it is not easy to make a book in only the course of two hours, repeating every step for the camera :). Luckily I had been prepared with almost finished books (à la Martha Stewart: “I have prepared something …”).
You can find the whole tutorial and scheme, how to bind this book in our sisterMAG issue N°7 on page 202.

As a special treat we have prepared five additional books which you can win!!! (no binding yourself ;). The book is 12 x 18 cm (perfect size for a travel companion maybe or a recipe book?), handbound by our very own Thea and will be shipped to you with a personal note from sisterMAG.

Video Shoot for sisterMAG Bookbinding Tutorial

How to win:
LIKE the sisterMAG page on Facebook and/or FOLLOW us on Twitter. Then simply leave a comment below and we will announce the winner shortly. The competition ends 14th June 2013.

Competition has now ended. The winners will be announced shortly.

If you tweet this competition or share it on Facebook or Google+, it will count as another entry and your chances to win will increase (don’t forget to include our handle @sister_mag or link to our Facebook page, so we can actually see your post ;).

Video Shoot for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialTools for Bookbinding Tutorial in sisterMAG N°7Video Shoot for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialThea at the video shoot for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialThea, Tori and Claus at the video shoot for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialThea during video shoot for sisterMAG Bookbinding TutorialFinishing up the first sisterMAG BOOK DIY Tutorial sisterMAG N°7

Find all pictures of this blogpost on Pinterest to repin and save for yourself.

New functions in sisterMAG n°7: Proverbs via Twitter and send our photos as greeting cards

Have you seen the beautiful proverbs in the new sisterMAG issue?

We included a new feature in sisterMAG N°7. You can directly tweet the proverbs when reading the magazine. Simply click on the “Twitter bird” below the proverb. We love to see the words spreading through the Internet!



Send sisterMAG pictures with the Telekom Erleben App on Facebook
The other new feature in the 7th issue is kindly supported by our partner Deutsche Telekom. If you like our feature “Pic and Sound“, in which we pair our favourite photos with our music fav’s, you may have seen that we’re now using Spotify to let the music play directly.

Even better Deutsche Telekom included our ‘Pic and Sound’ photos in their greeting card Facebook app*, so that you’re able to send the sisterMAG picture with your favourite song to any of your Facebook friends. Just click here.

Do you want our section pages as wallpapers to dress up your desktop? Comment below and I’ll ask Thea what she can do about it ;)! Have a lovely weekend!
Toni

*If you’re a sisterMAG app user, you may have to re-load the issue to access the Facebook app, as there was initially a bug in the link.

w23 – Thea’s week

w23 – sisterMAG Week
The insights into past week’s happenings are written by sisterNr°2: Thea. The soundtrack is a song which I found watching the trailer of the remake of “Much Ado About Nothing”: “Rose Rouge” by St. Germain. Play this tune and read more about sisterMAG’s past week.

After our meeting with Gudy on Monday (blog post here), we spent this week at home in Freiberg, where we started working on the new cover dress for issue N°8.
At this point we just want to send our best thoughts and wishes out to all of our friends and family at home, living in Passau or Saxony, near the rivers Elbe, Danube or Inn because the heavy rainfalls of the last weeks have again resulted in a horrible flood situation. Our grandparents are housebound themselves and lets just keep our fingers crossed that the situation returns to normal.

Unfortunately I cannot tell you too much about our work during the week because the cover dress will (of course) remain a surprise. Lets say that: Our fingers are covered in blisters because of the hot glue gun and the material we’ve used has never been featured on a sisterMAG before :)
The rest of this week was spent with meetings and coffee-dates with many friends and people of the sisterMAG circle!
w23 – sisterMAG Week

Shoes from “& Other Stories” – ABIGAIL LORICK LOAFERS

The translator – Coffee in Leipzig with Sarah
w23 – sisterMAG Week

For a very brief encounter we stopped in Leipzig on Friday and used the time to grab a coffee with one of our translators: Sarah. Sarah and I have known each other since school days, sat next to each other in advanced history course (and studied the extensive folders of history knowledge for the ‘Abitur’) and celebrated the end of school days together.
Currently Sarah is finishing up her Masters degree in translation in Leipzig and translates – together with two colleagues – the issues of sisterMAG.

w23 – sisterMAG Week

Location: “Hotel Seeblick” on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße in Leipzig’s district “Südvorstadt”

Our new intern – Breakfast with Lisa in Mitte
Last week we also received a lovely email from Fulda. It came from Lisa (@lisa_gjfd) who asked us whether we (as many of the big publishing houses) exclude pupils from internships. Of course not! Thus, we look forward to Lisa helping us this summer during her holidays with an internship at Carry-On Publishing. We have enough things to do and are really excited for her joining the team. Time flew by quickly as we exchanged thoughts on studies, future plans and online magazines on Saturday morning.

Location: “Petit Fleury”, Weinbergsweg in Berlin Mitte (the little sister of the café “Café Fleury” with wonderful French tartes and a classical French touch in interior design)

w23 – sisterMAG Week

w23 – sisterMAG Week

Anna, Thea, Toni & Lisa

sisterMAG supporter since day one – Weekend with Anna
The week/end was also full of ideas, discussions and input for new magazines, the section pages and the new covers. Our mom (@evin on Pinterest) always has a lot of ideas and the time in Freiberg was very valuable to develop the editorial plan. Secondly my very good friend Anna (@AS7688), who helps since the early days of sisterMAG spent a weekend in Berlin and filled my brain with conversations around scripts, workflow automation in Indesign and new internet technologies :).

w23 – sisterMAG Week

On Saturday we strolled along Kurfürstendamm (a faster way of walking was not possible due to shopping crowds and raucous DFB Cup Final fans) to visit Berlin’s first “& Other Stories” store. The new label from H&M apparently did its research well and listened to fashion bloggers: the website (www.stories.com) is similar to Pinterest, the product pictures imitate street style photography on Satorialist blogs and the label features designs which could easily walk the runway of Acne & Co. The store definitely invites you in, because the products are beautifully presented in an airy retail space. Why I tell you about “& Other Stories”? The sandals below will be seen on the new cover! How do you like them?

w23 – sisterMAG Week

sisterMAG Breakfast Meeting with Gudy Herder

Coffeeshop Oliv in Berlin

What is your favourite time of the day to meet friends, business partners or bloggers? For us it definitely is early in the morning for breakfast (or not so early in the morning, also for breakfast :). Furthermore you must all know the feeling after such a meeting, where you talked about many many links and pages you like and want to share. This is why we want to start to tell you about the “sisterMAG Breakfast Meetings” (see the links at the end of this post.

Coffeeshop Oliv in Berlin
Coffeeshop Oliv in Berlin

The Hive Conference brought bloggers from all over Europe to Berlin. A wonderful opportunity to add a few more days in the German capital to explore the town. Maybe this is what Gudy from the blog Eclectic Trends was thinking. We met the stylist and visual merchandising expert in Stockholm a few months ago. When she asked us to meet for breakfast after the conference, we jumped at this opportunity and immediately said yes. After all: at such conferences you see each other, you might drink a cup of coffee together but the next presentation starts soon and long talks are rare.

We met Gudy at one of our favourite coffeeshops in Berlin Mitt: OLIV on Münzstraße. We recommend their Bircher Muesli and slices of the various quiches and tartes which are on display in the minimalistic and chic coffeeshop.

Coffeeshop Oliv in BerlinCoffeeshop Oliv in Berlin

Coffeeshop Oliv in Berlin

Gudy definitely is a fascinating conversational partner and I was really impressed by her story. Especially her job, which lets her travel through the whole world to develop Visual Merchandising solutions for brands like Massimo Dutti, Chaumet, Mango or Montblanc is so interesting. I myself love to look at and take pictures from shop windows or (sometimes) shop interieurs and am always inspired by their ideas. I could have listened to Gudy for hours!
We also talked about Germany and Berlin and its quirks and specialties. Very interesting to hear the perspective of a born German who has lived that long in Spain. Especially not-as-nice topics such as jealousy in the community (and sometimes between bloggers as well) are very uncommon in Spain and to her. We love her point of view!

Last but not least some of the links we want to share after this breakfast meeting! Yours, Thea

  1. Your travel companion: With stay.com you can create your own travel guides. Gudy had been asked to tell her 10 picks for Barcelona. Very interesting site to be exploring (whether in your own city or for travelling in the summer) Stay.com ❤
  2. Another eMagazine which we hadn’t really heard before: the interior and design mag Llamas Valley ❤
  3. The book of the very famous interior stylist Sibella Court: “Nomad: A Global Approach to Interior Style” ❤

w22 – Toni’s week

During our weeks working on sisterMAG and the other Carry-On Publishing project we meet many interesting people and find a lot of interesting things we would love to share with you. Thus, we will start a new blogpost series on our sisterMAG blog called “Toni’s (or Thea’s) Week”. We hope you like our little inside view into the sisterMAG world!

Monday

Berlin

The week started off great with a bank holiday! Despite the gloomy weather forecast we were lucky and the sun came out in the afternoon. We used the moment and explored the surrounding of Berlin again, which is really beautiful. Former kings of Prussia built their own France / Italy in the countryside with little palaces and parks put between lakes and fields. Glienicke palace is one of them. It emulates an Italian villa with real artifacts decorating the whole building.

Berlin Glienicke Brücke

The nearby bridge is very famous in German history. In the middle of the bridge the border between East and West Germany (i.e. West Berlin) ran. The bridge was also the setting for various spy exchanges in the Cold War. Nowadays it’s difficult to imagine that this idyllic place was a political playground.

Berlin Glienicke

Tuesday

Office searching day! Yes, you heard right, we’re finally setting up office for Carry-On Publishing and its publications (sisterMAG will soon be joined by our next title “CVmag”) and we’re so much looking forward to having a space where contributors can come in for a talk or a brainstorming session, which we can decorate in a way that gives us inspiration on a daily basis.

And we were lucky! We saw a good place today and – finger’s crossed – things are looking good that we might actually get it. It’s in an old factory area with brick-stone buildings. There are many start-ups there, so very creative. More information as soon as we know for sure and we can make some photos!

Wednesday / Thursday

sisterMAG Paketkasten

Catching up on work and especially eMails (but still long way to go before the eMail list is any shorter). I’m pretty excited to plan the Paketkasten test (for all English-speaking reader: the German post is beta-testing the new “parcel box” with 10 sisterMAG readers), welcoming the first testers, checking sizes and spots, brainstorming about our Paketkasten Party in August.

For all people living in Germany: We still have some spaces left. If you want to test the new DHL service for free (later the Paketkasten will cost a couple of hundred Euros to set up), just write us an eMail (mail@sister-mag.com)! More information in sisterMAG N°7.

Friday – Sunday

Finally, the weekend of The Hive was there! The conference was very different from last year’s, where we had spoken the first time to a larger audience.
The Hive Conference in Berlin 2013 #hive13
The Hive Conference in Berlin 2013 #hive13

The Hive Conference in Berlin 2013 #hive13

What made this year special were the little moments:

Yours, Toni

The Hive Conference in Berlin 2013 #hive13