book #025

I was challenged to make a book out of this long, skinny, very sturdy brown paper bag from the liquor store. I do love brown paper! I wanted to somehow make use of it having an inside and an outside, to use it to hold something as well as to be a book. I thought I could create compartments by sewing across the width of the bag, thus sectioning it off into fully enclosed secret hiding places, and at the same time use the sewing to attach a few pages. A little experimentation showed that a quarter of the bag's length was a nice size for a book page, and that four sections could all be neatly folded up and tucked into the little bit left at the open end of the bag. (Note that there's an open compartment at the top of the bag, where you do the tucking.)

I ended up stapling the pages in, instead of sewing, and tucked some bits of ephemera and flat thingies into each hidden compartment. Yes, you have to get in there somehow, preferably without destroying the book. But why can't a book be a puzzle, too?

This is going to be a fun book to fill. It will be something about threes, or things that come in threes, or perhaps a story with three parts. I will probably end up carefully taking it apart and replacing the contents of the compartments with more appropriate or relevant ephemera when I know what the book is saying. Ideas are flowing.