Book #066 - Mountains, maybe

Mountains? Clouds? Layers of...something? This occurred to me while I was looking at some pictures of misty, foggy places. I think it has a lot of potential; it would suggest a totally different story done in shades of brown, wouldn't it? Or the ragged edges could be at the bottom - like curtains, or veils or tattered petticoats. So simple, but I like it a lot.

Book #063 - Idaho

You know, this state book idea is helpful for when I need inspiration, but making them is going to be tricky. I am having to enlarge my source materials to make reasonable sized books, and as I want them all to be at the same scale I have to take care to do the enlarging exactly the same each time. Then there's the distortion contributed by the particular projection of the source map, which becomes much more noticeable at the larger size. I'd better get a system figured out sooner rather than later if I don't want to do a bunch of the early states over.

Well, anyway - here's Idaho! It has a nice straight western boundary. Someone commented that Hawaii will be hard, but I think not; it borders only water, no other land masses. That'll be a piece of cakewalk in the park.

Book #056 - Album-like object

An album/envelope/picture and ephemera saver. Pages are 4.25 x 5.5 red, blue and cream; red and blue pages have slits to hold things by the corners and the creamy pages are folded to make pockets on one side; sixteen pages altogether; pamphlet bound. OK.

Book #052 - Yellow Question With Music

The book (cover) is yellow. The book (pages) are music.


The question, which occurred to me as I was getting ready to cut the cover down to size, is: Is there any reason a book cover can't be larger than the pages? Are there any reasons why you might like a book cover to be larger than the pages?

I'm going to sleep on it.

Book #041

This book was done at 9PM. It truly was!

Then I started looking for a blog widget that counts down days. And now it's 2:17AM!

So here is a scan of the front of today's book. I know, it looks like a square of paper, but it is a book front. The pages are a cream colored card stock, staggered as on Day #030, and the covers are this brown and pink dotted paper that I can't seem to get enough of these days. The whole thing went together in about 15 minutes. Nice book.

Book #038 - a Highly Experimental...Experiment

Also highly pink. It just happened that way.

This all started because I had a cereal box, a raisin box and another cereal box that nested just perfectly and I thought it would be cool if I could find enough of the right sized boxes to make a whole book that way. And I might still, with 327 days left in the year. But I did (and still do) have a whole lot of identical pieces of cardboard - hot pink glossy on one side - left over from a previous life, and they're already scored for folding in one place. And I have a LOT of them. Sooooo...

I decided to try out the idea using the hot pink cardboard. It was instructive, as an experiment. Cutting 16 pieces all exactly the right size (2.5 mm smaller each side, each time) was a challenge, as you can easily see in the photos. When I got to the end the original binding idea was obviously not going to work. I tossed around a few ideas and settled on cable ties: two biggish ones to hold the pages together, and two more tiny ones to hold the ends of the biggish ones together. They are easily enough removed if I get a better idea down the road.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It was interesting, but I don't really like it all that well. It's not a lot of fun to put together - far too little room for error to suit me - and the results are...meh. It's heavy, too. But one of these days (like maybe next October) it will dawn on me why this book needs to exist, and then it will become one of my favorites. I'll betcha.

Book #037 - Red Envelopes for the New Year

I had some of these Red Envelopes left from the Lunar New Year. Happy Year of the Ox, by the way. They were the perfect size for a small book cover, and I thought I could just slip a piece of cardboard inside to stiffen things a little, and then glue them to the ends of an accordion-folded page block. As it turned out I decided instead to slit the back of the envelope and slip the end panel of the accordion inside the envelope. It stays nicely with no gluing - always a plus in my book. (Ooh, no pun intended , really.) The accordion is cut from a big sheet of watercolor paper that folded up just right to make 12 perfect size panels. So...you've probably guessed that it's going to be a book about the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac. I already have some faux postage from New Years past...so that's a start.

The envelopes are not only very RED, but the paper has a velvety surface that is just a bugger to photograph - reflects light all over the place. And all that gold! Actually the gold turned out surprisingly well in this scan; metallics are normally impossible. Anyhow, it looks better in the blow-up so please click.

Gung hei fat choi!

Book #036 - Pseudo Belgian

Well. This is my new Favorite Binding. It could be called a variation on a Belgian Binding - that kind of variation that happens when you're trying to do something from memory and can't quite remember how. The covers and spine are three separate pieces that are sewn together. OK, more like woven together - the spine just sits there with the threads passing over and under it. The pages are added last, at which point the whole thing comes together as a single connected whole. It's hard to describe, but it really is very elegant. I think its greatest virtue is that, although there are several steps, you do them one at a time, and none is really what you'd call difficult. So overall it's very easy. I like this book a lot.

Thus far it's empty (the pages are a pretty paprika-ish color) but there seems to be a theme building. The binding is Belgian (sort of) and the thread I used to bind it is Belgian linen (a coincidence) and I was watching PBS while I worked and lo and behold - Poirot! (He was Belgian, mon ami.) So...a book of Belgian? Horses? Endive? Lace? Audrey Hepburn?

Oh, and the window on the front cover is just the top layer of the corrugated board carefully removed to expose the flutes.

Book #033: Heart-shaped Windows

Today's book is a small, windowed accordion. It's made of three strips of slightly different lengths, each folded in fourths; when they are put together the difference in length translates into three layers with a little bit of space between. I'll probably add something to the back layer to show through the heart shaped windows. On the reverse side, in the center fold, there is one signature of three sheets (12 pages). I think this will be a good place for a story or poem.

In case you're wondering, it's leaning up against an old pincushion. A Finnish friend, Leo, gave me his mother's sewing basket, including a pincushion full of threaded needles. So this book was sewn together with a needle threaded by Jenny Utter in - I don't know - a long time ago. Jenny would be well over 100 years old now. Little did she know.

Book #032: The Path

Full title:
'The Path - Travesty #1 on the work of the Brothers Grimm.'
This is the first of I'm not sure how many so-called Travesties. I'll get into that more as time goes on. Making this tiny little thing was an ordeal, since I had forgotten everything I used to have in my memory about imposition - how to lay out multiple book pages on a single sheet of paper (both sides) so that they are in the right reading order when the book is assembled. Not that right reading order matters much with a book that starts out,

"Once upon a time," murmured intentions, the path.

Anyway, it took me almost three hours to get it right, but now I have a good template so the rest will go faster. I also found a very nice free font called Erasmus. I do love fonts. There are a lot of freebies here, and it would be worth checking them out just for the names...better than local bands.

Book #031

Well I thought I'd wrap up the month with a big, wild party of a book. It is Saturday night after all. This was made with all the junk mail I've accumulated this week, plus some free postcards that I picked up at Diva Espresso when we went out for coffee this evening. And I threw in a couple of candy wrappers and other ephemera that were kicking around.

There are 7 signatures, each with between 3 and 7 pieces of something in them, sewn together with a 4-needle binding. My favorite pages in the book are the window envelopes from bills and advertising; that's where I put the free postcards, candy wrappers, etc. It's always a surprise to see how accidental combinations of things can morph into something unexpected and way more entertaining - see a couple of details below. This was one of the most fun books so far. I guess junk just really speaks to me.



Looks like I have some threads to trim. The four needle binding is the first sewn binding I learned. It is a very simple concept and easy to understand, a royal pain to keep under control while it is the works and very satisfying when it is finally finished.

Book #030

Here's a picture of the cover of today's book. Unfortunately I am having some infuriating problems with my computer. Can anyone explain to me what to do when my scratch disks fill up?

The inside of this book is the interesting part; the pages are kind of unusual. But it will have to wait. Silly scratch disks.

OK. Scratch disk gods have been appeased and here is a picture of the inside of the book. The pieces of paper that make up the pages are all the same size but are folded in different places, so the pages are graduated in width. They are arranged in a single signature, so (in this example) the light colored paper is both the shortest first page and the longest last page. The dark brown is the next shortest and next longest...and so on. At the center, the light paper has been used again, and folded in half, so the centerfold pages are the same size. I think it would be fun to put an image on each page, and plan for the exposed parts of the images at the edges to combine to make a different picture when the pages are lying flat.

All of which makes me think of fore-edge painting. Fore-edge painting is an old art, still practiced by a tiny handful of artists, in which an image is painted on the very edges of the pages of a book. I don't mean that the edges of the book are decorated in a way that can be seen when the book is closed. The painting is done on the face of the pages, and the image is visible only when the pages are fanned - it is invisible when the book is closed. Here are two examples. I appropriated these images from the website of fore-edge artist Martin Frost so I could show them to you, and I'll remove them in a few days. Do go to Frost's website - and prepare to be wowed.

Book #029

I wasn't feeling very inspired today, at least not where the book of the day was concerned. It was another good day in the studio, though. That was a happy thing.

This is a very basic sewn binding, it goes by a number of names. It's a running stitch - a simple in and out; at the end hole the thread comes out and jumps over to the next signature and goes in, and out, and in and out, and jump and in and out.....

And so on. The strip of gold paper was added at the last - slipped underneath those long stitches - and glued to the front and back. That's all the cover this one's going to get.

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.

Book #022

Four booklets in one. Each color is a separate 8-page booklet, sewn together using a similar color perle cotton. Then all four are stacked and the ponytail of threads is tied in an overhand knot, binding all four booklets together. The threads are wrapped, in alternating colors, around the remaining threads, to make a "friendship bracelet" sort of cord. Another knot at the end holds it all together, and the ends are trimmed. The booklets are about 4.5 " square, the cord is about 6" long.

Book #021

Here's a book with a Coptic binding...sort of. I've done this binding before and thought I'd remember how, but in the end I had to make it up as I went along. I'm a great believer in improvisation; the first person who ever made a Coptic bound book, almost 2000 years ago, didn't have directions, and look how that turned out! Really, if it holds together and opens and shuts and the pages turn, what more do you really need? A book is a book is a book.

One cool thing about this binding is that anything slab-like can be used as a cover, as long as you have two slabs the same size and can put some holes in them.

Another cool thing about this binding is that Coptic books, and Coptic art in general, are beautiful and fascinating and there is a lot of information to be had. You could start here, or here.

Book #018

This is a tiny accordion book with wrapped covers. It's a traditional Japanese binding that uses no adhesives or sewing or anything but paper and some heavy card stock. Very nifty.

Unfortunately, it was the most difficult thing to photograph that I have ever encountered. Whether it was something about the book, the materials I used, the camera or the phases of the moon - I don't know. This was the only picture that turned out at all (out of about 20!) so I can't show you any more details than this. I'll make a bigger one sometime this year, maybe it will take a better picture. Meanwhile, the Library of Congress has some good directions, with illustrations, for making a book like this. Go take a look.

Book #016

I ended up scanning this, although photos would have been preferable (I didn't get batteries for the camera). It actually scanned fairly well except for the spine. It's impossible to show the spine without a photo, because you can't flatten it; when you open the book the spine curls up and disappears. Sort of like a potato bug.

This binding is sometimes called a Piano Hinge, and it is similar. Actually it's several piano hinges, and they connect the pianos together into one big...what? Mega piano? Enough of that. Anyway, the image at the left is the front of the book, the other is the inside center.

I have boxes and boxes of greeting cards; my friends save them and pass them along. Among other things, I make little scrapbooks out of them. They end up completely covered with the stuff I glue into them, so it doesn't matter what I use for pages, as long as it's sturdy and takes glue. What a great way to recycle cards! This is one binding I would use for such a book, the fastest and it requires only scissors and some sticks; there are other suitable bindings, and we have 349 days left to look at them.

Book #015

Right off the bat I have to say, "Isn't scanning metallics fun?!" That big black oval is aluminum foil. It's the inside cover of the book (shown here open) and it was supposed to look like a mirror. In real life it does a pretty good job. More curious to me than the color are the stripes...where did they come from? No, it is not corrugated cardboard underneath, Go figure.

The faces are just like yesterday's hands: two profiles to a piece of paper, folded. There are three such papers, making 12 faces in all. If you look closely at the unfinished faces you can see where the pages are sewn to the cover. The faces were just begging to have paint smeared on them and I obliged. I haven't smeared paint in a while, and it sure felt good. There's a bit more to be done, too. Another day.

As the faces developed the combinations and juxtapositions began to hint at little stories - the sneaky red guy glancing back at his wan and befuddled looking neighbor, for instance. And wouldn't it be interesting to plan the profiles so that adjacent ones would be identical (back to back) as if they were the same person looking forward and backward, or inward and outward - two aspects of the same person. You could use images of real people, or silhouettes. All sorts of possibilities...

Book #014

A hand shaped book - tracings of my hands to be specific. As you can see they are double, connected at the wrist, and then sewn with a pamphlet stitch through the fold at the center. There are two pieces of paper, so that means 8 pages when done (or 6 pages plus front and back). I've started to glue in bits about palmistry, and plan to collage it pretty solidly with more information, diagrams and pictures. It will be a dense introduction to the ancient art of chirology. Do you know which element your hands take after? Earth, Air, Water or Fire? Well, maybe you need this book.