Category: Bookarts

Art, Bookarts

Book Binding Tutorial

Shelly

Someone in one of my art or journalling groups (I can’t for the life of me recall which one) asked about hand binding her own journals. She’d tried following a Coptic binding tutorial, but couldn’t make sense of it. I told her I liked to use a bastardized version of Coptic binding to make my own journals, and that I’d try making an illustrated tutorial showing how I do it. So, that’s how I spent my weekend. I don’t know how successful it’ll prove to be, or whether it’ll be any clearer than some of the other tutorials out there. If anyone wants to try it and give me feedback, I’d welcome it.

Single Needle Chain Stitch Binding Tutorial

Now, if I could only recall which group the discussion occurred in…

Art, Bookarts, Journals, Photography

A New Book and a Happy Accident

Shelly

The ink and paper I ordered still haven’t been delivered (they should’ve been here on Friday), so I’m sort of stuck for journalling. I’ve got pens a-plenty, but I’m really preferring working with a dip pen. Hrmph. So, I worked on some backgrounds. The first one is just plain old stamping, using a carved eraser and a wine cork with cheap acrylic craft paint.\r\n\r\n

The second one was less involved, but I think more interesting. I started with diluted blue acrylic paint. After it dried, I sloshed on some super diluted gesso. Because I was working on a slanted surface, the gesso ran all over the place, including onto the carpet. Yikes! So I grabbed my roll of paper towels to blot the mess, and noticed that they left lovely basket-weave lines in the blotted gesso. I like the pattern, and it should provide guidelines for writing. I can’t write level to save my life, so I’m happy. Yay for serendipity!

Sweet

100_1243

I also bound another book this morning. It’s small and chunky and terribly cute: 3 x 3 3/4 inches and 48 pages (12 signatures of 4 pages each), Coptic bound with linen thread. The pages are Cartiera Magnani hot press watercolor paper, which is yummy.

Small Denim Book, spine

Small Denim Book, top

The covers are made from denim from an old pair of my jeans, cut twice as wide as the width of the pages and a little taller. I ran them through the wash cycle a couple of times so the edges would fray. I was careful to keep the original seams at the centers of the fabric pieces, so that when I folded them in half around the boards, the seams would be along the spine edges. I then glued them to the boards (actually, two pieces of watercolor paper, because I wanted flexible covers), weighted them, and let them dry overnight.

Bookarts, Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness

Wonderfalls, New Journal Part Deux, and another Big Brother Rant

Shelly

Hemp Bound Journal: Cover

I spent time last night watching the first half of the last disc of Wonderfalls. The first disc sat here for nearly a month before I got around to watching it. I couldn’t remember what it was or why I’d put it in my Netflix queue, so I waited until I was good and bored before I watched it.

It was well worth the wait. The writing is brilliant–funny and smart. It’s quirky, but not annoyingly so. And, as there was, alas, only one season of the show, it’s not a huge, on-going time committment.

While I was watching TeeVee, I put some finishing touches on the hemp-bound journal I made the other night. I used torn masking tape to attach a photo of a stormy, sullen winter sky. It’s been ungodly hot lately, so I thought a reminder of cooler weather would be motivatory. We’ll see. Because there are only 24 pages, I decided to mete them out as two-page spreads. With one spread for a calendar/table of contents, that leaves 22 plus one to grow on. My intention is to do a spread a day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now some more ranting about Big Brother. This one has been germinating for a while. In a previous episode, Eric got his knickers in a twist because Mike was kissing and hitting on the women in the house. M’kay. The women in question either enjoyed it (one, in particular, claimed to enjoy it a lot) or told him to fuck the hell off in no uncertain terms. It seems to me that that ought to’ve been the end of the Situation, but because Eric is afflicted with a surplus of testosterone, it wasn’t.

Eric, as head of household, decided that it was his place to give Mike a talking to. Apparently, those poor, helpless girls weren’t capable of speaking their minds and it was up to Eric to come to their rescue. Poor little girls. After calling Mike on being a flirtatious pain in the arse, Eric spent the rest of his tenure as HoH telling everyone that Mike had sexually harassed the women and that he needed to be voted out of the house. It fit nicely into Eric’s strategy. He wanted Mike gone and branding him as a pervy bastard was an effective way to achieve his goal.

Mike was a jerk, there’s no doubt about that, but using the umbrella of sexual harassment as part of your strategy for winning a game is, I think, pretty craptacular. I also thought Eric’s ubermanly “I’m going to protect these poor, defenseless girls from the big, bad, kissy monster” schtick was far more degrading to the women in the house than Mike could ever have dreamt of being.

What an ass! And a bully, too. Eric was this close to doing physical violence to Mike because he thought he’d been talking smack about Eric’s family. Who the hell cares? You don’t go around beating up people because they’ve got big mouths. It doesn’t solve anything and only makes you look like a total and complete fuckwit.

Oh, and I’m liking Kaysar more and more with every episode. The guy is smart and, I think, appropriately devious.

Bookarts, Photography

Demolition Derby and the Sunset that Wasn’t

Shelly

I finally got around to cropping and uploading photos I took at last weekend’s demolition derby. Yes, I said demolition derby. If you haven’t been to one, you have no idea what you’re missing. Not only is it the ultimate in recycling, it’s a ginormous amount of fun. I especially recommend watching the Bumble Bees (AKA the minis). A little four-door Geo Metro won the mini division this year. Alas, I got no pictures of the minis, but I got quite a few of the large and mid-sized cars, including a firemen’s confab. Also, alas, there were no explodiations or infernos this year.

It’d been overcast and oppressively hot that day, but before the derby proper started, there was a lovely break in the clouds and a tiny peek at what would have been a spectacular sunset.

100_0580

No arting today, but I made a nifty little book last night out of the end of an old stash of paper. When I worked at the art museum, I was given a stack of museum board. It’s half-way between rough watercolor paper and Davey board. It’s interesting stuff–nice for oil pastels or any number of media that work well on toned paper. The texture has a definite grain, but it’s not too pronounced once you’ve worked on it.

Hemp Journal: Spine

I tore it down to size (I really prefer torn paper to cut paper, especially for journals). I was too lazy to dig out my book board, so I used two folded sheets of the paper for the front and back covers. I doubled them over and punched holes in them along the open side, then used eyelets to reinforce the holes and close the open edge. Because I wanted to keep the book looking rustic, I used hemp twine to bind it. It’s just a basic, single-needle Coptic stitch.

Art, Bookarts, Collage

More Vessels

Shelly

A Book of Vessels: Tomato Toque
A Book of Vessels: Tomato Toque

A Book of Vessels: Green Tea
A Book of Vessels: Green Tea

A Book of Vessels: Gorilla Fish
A Book of Vessels: Gorilla Fish

A Book of Vessels: Eden Sundress
A Book of Vessels: Eden Sundress

These are the latest in my series for the Vessels book. The round spinner dials on many of the collages came from the Dial-a-Tale book I found at a thrift store. I took the book apart and used the cover for a book I made. Most of the illustration from the book are pretty bad, but there were a few I saved, thinking I might be able to use them for collage.

Bookarts

Red Fleece Journal

Shelly

Book_RedFleece_FrontSM
Red Fleece Journal, Front
6 x 4 inches
140lb Cartiera Magnani hot press watercolor paper
buttonhole binding with coptic and long stitches

Book_RedFleece_Spine2SM
Spine

I’ve been wanting to try a buttonhole binding, but, as always, I got hung up on what to do about the cover. Then, I remembered a remnant of fleece I’d bought with the intention of making some braided tug toys for the dogs. The bright red color is cheerful and the fleece is soft on the hands. Since it’s a small book, there was still plenty of fleece left over to make a few tug toys–a win-win solution.

The paper came from my stash of 140lb Cartiera Magnani scraps that were left-over from the Blue Book. There are ten signatures of two folded sheets, so the book has 40 pages.

I ended up attaching the cover a little too tightly to the book, where the eyelets are. At those four points, the cover pulls around the edges of the spine. Next time I’ll be careful to leave a little slack at those points. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with the stitching. It’s nice and tight without being too tight. And, for once, I didn’t tear any of the holes by applying too much pressure.

Art, Artist Books, Bookarts

Blue Journal

Shelly

Blue Book
Blue Journal, Front
140lb Cartiera Magnani hot press watercolor paper, Coptic bound with cotton thread
8 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches, 10 signatures of 2 sheets (40 pages)

Blue Book
Spine

Blue Book
Spine detail

This is the (mostly) finished book for the art journal round robin. It’s a color-themed RR and, as you can see, my journal will be focusing on shades of blue. I used more Cartiera Magnani paper (140lb hot press watercolor paper), which should allow everyone to work in pretty much any medium they choose. The soft denim cover will, I hope, hold up well in the mail. The sewn, open spine binding is flexible and ought to allow for some expansion.

Between folding and tearing the paper down to the right size and sewing the bindings on two books today, my fingertips are hamburger and my hands ache. But, I’m finished! I still have a couple of spreads of my own artwork to do before mailing it off, but the hard part is done.

Oh, and I’ve got tons of small pieces of paper left over to make some more silly little books with. I should be able to get a couple of 3 x 3 3/4 inch books and one 2 1/2 x 1 3/4 inch book out of it.

Art, Bookarts

Dial-A-Tale Journal

Shelly

Dial-A-Tale Book: Front Cover
Dial-A-Tale Journal
exposed spine binding
7 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches

Dial-A-Tale Book: Spine
Spine

I’m working on making a book for an art journal round robin. I knew I wanted to do another exposed spine binding, but hadn’t decided on exactly which types of stitches I wanted to use. I hadn’t done a multi-stitch binding and thought I’d give it a try. I did a test run on something a little less ambitious than the journal I’m making, though. For this I cut down a old kids’ board book and used some sketch-weight paper. It’s not the most elegant binding job, but I think I’ve got the basics down well enough to go ahead with the main course.