Trying to finish The Freedom Fighter’s Manual.
Category: Bookarts
Bookbinding with Piglet
Piglet Meets a Heffalump
8 x 6 inches
Canson 140 lb cold press watercolor paper Coptic bound with waxed orange linen thread
Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded by Water
8 x 6 inches
Canson 140 lb cold press watercolor paper Coptic bound with waxed black linen thread
I found these kids’ books at Goodwill today and couldn’t reaist them. I think Piglet would approve.
Paper, Paper, Paper
I’ve spent the last four hours tearing down paper. That might not sound too laborious, but it’s 140 lb cold press watercolor paper, so it’s heavy and rough. My hands are sore, so I’m saving the binding work for tomorrow.
Red Book
90 lb black Stonehenge paper with boards recycled from a children’s game, Coptic bound with waxed linen thread
6 1/2 x 5 inches
I moved some junk around and, of course, found a big Rubbermaid tub of collage and paper stuff I’d squirreled away. In there was some paper I’d torn down for a book, and I’d even cut the boards. So I thought I’d bind it. Once everything is assembled, a basic Coptic binding goes quickly. I think this one took me 15 minutes.
Tiny Books
I spent the afternoon tearing down a bunch of crappy paper into book-sized pieces. Reduce, reuse, recycle! I have enough for a total of five regular coptic bound books plus two single sheet coptic books.
I finished the two smaller books.
This one is 3 x 3 inches. The pages are made from the tail-end of some totally unacceptable chipboard-type cardstock that I love shamelessly. I’m sure it’s brimful of acid and other vile things, and I do not care.
The second one is 3 x 2 7/8 inches. It’s filled with heavy, light blue, cold press paper that was the outer portfolio for a bunch of ritzy old master posters. The portfolio paper was too nice to throw away, so I hung on to it.
I Made a Book
The Mirage
three needle, single sheet Coptic bound book using recycled materials
7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches
The boards used to belong to a college yearbook. The pages were cut down from larger pieces I did years ago and meant to bind but never got around to it. They were single folded sheets, then, which would have been easy to do as a Coptic binding with single-sheet sections. But I’ve been wanting to try out one of Keith Smith’s single sheet Coptic bindings, so I decided to cannibalize some old work to practice on.
Why single-sheet Coptic? Because I’ve got all kinds of single sheets of things that I want to turn into books, but I don’t want to stab-bind them. I want the pages to lay completely flat.
It’s not perfect. Because I was working with single, unfolded sheets, it was a little too easy to get them flipped upside down. Which I did. Which meant that the center section of sewing is a little skewed because the center holes in the flipped sheets did not line up properly. Also, though this is actually less annoying, those pages are now upside down. I’ll have to go in and rework them so that they make sense. Story of my life. Boys and girls: Never attempt bookbinding while drinking bourbon. It’s a bad combination for a lot of reasons. Like blood.
When Art Attacks
Hark! A Book!
I needed a square(ish) format book for journaling, and I like working on kraft paper, so I rounded up some grocery bags and also grabbed some brown packing paper from the recycling bins at work. The boards are recycled from a kids’ book.
In Ether Clad
An alphabet book of collage with altered poems taken from Wallace Bruce’s In Clover and Heather
5 x 3 1/2 inches
16 signatures (32 pages)
140lb Cotman cold press watercolor paper Coptic bound with linen thread
The set is here. I had a few extra pages, so there are four bonus spreads. I’ll scan and post those tomorrow.
It’s a Bouncing Baby Book!
Coptic Bound Book
5 x 3 1/2 inches
16 signatures (32 pages)
140lb Cotman cold press watercolor paper Coptic bound with linen thread
Tacket Binding
English Grammar and Composition
tacket bound with hemp cords and recycled book cover
7 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches
12 signatures of two sheets (48 pages) of cardstock
red paper boat 