I'm a bookbinder and book artist and my blog is about my bookbinding projects and ambitions. Lately, I have been focusing on historic book structures from the Medieval and Renaissance eras. I am a member of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild and the Pacific Center for the Book Arts.
Thank you to everyone who has been following these Halloween Challenges and casting votes for my books! The Bookbinding Etsy Street Team actually had a tie for the award this year.
The two winning books were my tunnel book, Trapped Inside a Haunted House, and Sara Hindmarch's book, Vampire Diary, so congratulations to us! Sara is defending her title since she won the award last year, way to go! Check out the full results on the team's blog.
The Trans Canada Etsy Team's Halloween Ch allege ended yesterday too. The winner was a Haunted Tree Pendant by MyBelleBijoux. I voted for her pendant too, it is really great! So my MacBeth journal was the runner up (again... I was the runner up last time too!).
This week, my halloween books are looking for votes! The Bookbinding Etsy Street Team is having its second halloween challenge for the BEST Zombie Award. I made this tunnel book for the challenge: Trapped Inside a Haunted House.
AND - the Trans Canada Etsy Street Team is also having a Halloween challenge this week! Same idea, except that this team consists of a wide range of artisans and crafters, not just book artists. So the collection of halloween items is wonderfully wide-ranging! For this challenge, I submitted my Macbeth journal which has the witches' chant on the back cover, printed onto some of my handmarbled paper - and an illustration from an old storybook on the front cover.
If you leave comments on either of those blogs, there are little surprises to be won by some random commenters, so be sure to leave a comment in both places! Happy Halloween...
Free Shipping in my Etsy shop this weekend! All items ship free to Canada and USA locations. There is a special section of items that ship free worldwide!
When I was at PBI this year, a small group of us decided to organize a recurring book swap. We agreed to get the book, More Making Books by Hand, and work our way through the projects in this book. So for each swap, we are making a small edition so that we can send a book to each person in the group and we'll get a book from each person in return. And they are all miniature books, so nothing larger than 3" in any direction. The first swap was completed a couple months ago and now I'm working on the second project, I need to have the edition done by the end of the month. But here's what the first swap looks like - this is one book from each person - mine is the second from the left, with the green and brown marbled paper on the cover.
They all have content too, since we're giving each project a theme and this time we were supposed to do something that would be a self portrait, without using a picture of ourselves. The results were incredibly wide ranging! Much fun. Can't wait to see the results of the next swap.
I've also been making 2010 planners, getting ready for the new year.
And some Halloween Journals! I picked up an old book of nursury rhymes and stories at a thrift shop, and the book was in rough condition, pages falling out, etc. I used some pictures from this book for the covers of these journals.
Hardcover pamphlets are one of my favorite things to make. I made a few recently. This one with the rice fields on the cover is my favorite of this batch. This particular book is being sold to raise money for Cancer Research in support of Jay (Loopy4Ewe) who is raising money for the Weekend2EndCancer event in Ottawa. The rice field picture is a page from Jay's 2008 calendar. Her calendar was full of gorgeous Japanese scenery and she sent the photos to me thinking that I might be able to use them (yes!), so I made this one in support of her fund raising efforts. I used lime green leather on the spine and the pages are a mixture of various colourful papers.
Over at the Book Arts Forum we just did a Pamphlet Book Swap so I made another for the swap and sent it off for Jackie. (Still eagerly awaiting my return book, I think it is coming overseas so I must sit patiently!) Jackie's book has two fabrics on the cover and again a mixture of different papers for the pages.
Then, just for fun, I made four more in different colours, available on Etsy.
The Morgan Conservatory ( morganconservatory.org ) in Cleveland, Ohio, is having its paper anniversary this weekend, celebrating its first successful year. Congratulations to them!
In preparation for this anniversary event, handmade papers made at the Morgan were given to artists far and wide, and the artists were asked to do something with it, then send it back to the Morgan for a silent auction this weekend to raise money for the centre.
This is what I did with my sheet of handmade paper from the Morgan. A journal, made with a crossed structure binding, and a matching pair of mini book earrings, and a little book pendant on a chain. They are all stamped with my original "Man and Wife" hand carved rubber stamps. All packaged prettily in a wooden box which I customized a bit to make the little compartments. I hope everyone had a great time at the event!
These are the first 4 flag books that I made. This effort was prompted by the B.E.S.T Book Swap. Our last swap was all about flag books so I had to make one. But I had never made one before.
The very first one: it uses found images for the flags and the accordion, and the cover has some of my paste paper on there. There is a quote about blue skies printed on the back of the flags.
The second one: it also uses found images for the flags. There are a few lines from the Frost poem "Birches" printed on the backs of these flags. The book cloth on the cover was hand-painted then backed with paper to make book cloth. I did not do the painting, though, it was a friend with whom I swapped some book cloth several years ago (thank you Leah, if you ever happen by here and see this!).
The third one: this was made in preparation of the fourth since I had an idea for the fourth, but wanted to try it first. I used more found images for the flags (somehow I manage to collect a lot of images in triplicate or quadruplicate or quintuplicate and this turns out to be handy when playing with the flag book structure). So I wanted the silly bobkitten (or whatever sort of beast that is) to pop through a frame.
After successfully getting that bobkitten to pop through his frame, I was ready to do it again with real flags. So, this very literal flag book is made with Canada flags, obviously. And it worked, the maple leaf pops through nicely. Some of my own marbled paper is on the cover. This is the book that I submitted to the B.E.S.T Book Swap and you can check out all the flag books on the team's blog if you are interested.
The Trans Canada Etsy Team issued an Autumn Challenge a while ago, and now all the entires are online for voting! So go over to the team blog (transcanadaetsyteam.blogspot.com) and vote for #11! or #13! er, I mean, go vote for your favorite!
This is my Autumn journal (#11 when you vote!)
I cut a circle out of the front cover to create an enclosed window. The back of the window is lined with a piece of real birch bark, and then a small red maple leaf was placed inside before I sealed it over with a plastic transparency sheet. The birch bark is from that tree in the campground where I camped this past summer and there were big pieces of bark peeling off so I brought a bit home with me. The little red maple leaf, I picked last Fall from a tree near my house and pressed in a big book all year.
The marbled paper on the covers is some that I hand marbled myself. There is also some handmade paper that I made, as the paste-down on the inside of each cover.
My other submission for this challenge is this sheet of marbled paper - #13 when you vote!! (Also available on Etsy of course)
Vote here: transcanadaetsyteam.blogspot.com And if you also leave a comment over there after you vote, there is a little giveaway for some lucky commenter (not here, over at the TCET blog!)
Well, if you are the sort of person who saves boxes because you think they look really cool... then you could make them into journals...or even better, send me the boxes and I'll do it for you! Just recently, I made this batch of books for a friend who has a tendancy to accumulate and save boxes. Definitely some fun things going on here. You followin' me camera guy?
And another batch made from boxes that I had accumulated:
And really, if you have a box that you think I should convert into a book, let me know! Go to my Artfire shop and contact me that way. I've never met a box that I couldn't convert into a book!
During our brief travels this summer, we visited Sherbrooke Village which is an historic village, and it has a printery. I had visited this village when I was a kid, but I did not remember there being a printshop. This time, however, it was the most interesting shop in town (although a bindery would have been even better).
Sherbrooke Village is just a regular town really, and in the 1960s the town decided to turn itself into a museum. So all the historic homes and shops were restored to their 1800s state. And although it's primarily a tourist attraction, some of the buildings like the church and courthouse, which are part of the historic village, are also still used by the larger community of Sherbrooke. There is a simple wooden fence around the historic village and on the other side of the fence within arm's reach, is the modern town of Sherbrooke with exhaust fumes and ATMs and all that good stuff. So it is an interesting juxtaposition.
They have all the things you would expect to find in an historic village like a blacksmith, a schoolhouse, a post office, a jail, the doctor's home and office, a pharmacy, the potter's barn, etc. But as I said, the printshop was a little highlight so I thought I'd share some of the photos that I took.
Chandler and Price in action Many drawers of type My kid, who might have mixed up some type, but I'm not admitting anything...
Now I have weekly planners, as well as the monthly and daily planners that I mentioned before. Some people are very particular about their planners and it can make a big difference if you have space to write every day or not! My favorite planner is the "weekly" variety like these ones. These particular planners are 13-month agendas, starting Sept 2009 and ending Sept 2010. This is one designed to my own preferences concerning size, format, page layout, etc.
So whether you like daily, weekly, or monthly, these might just work for you!
And for the next month, I'm going to give away *free* mini leather journal pendants with every planner. Woot! Kinda like these ones:
As I've mentioned before, I have a rather different approach to the "travel journal" concept. Rather than taking a blank book with me when I go away, I travel with no book, just a bag. I collect papers, postcards, tickets, maybe some random notes here and there, and end up with a bag of loose papers and brochures and other related paraphernalia. Then when I get home and get organized, I transform the paraphernalia into a book.
Recently, I made one of these "travel journals" for myself, using papers and materials that I collected over the summer with my family. We didn't have a big vacation, just a bunch of smaller weekend-type-stuff, but there are lots of memories to be kept nonetheless. I never seem to have time to make books for myself so this time, before we went on our last camping trip, I packed up everything I needed and took all the materials with me so that I could make the book while we were camping.
The camping/bookbinding studio:
I completed the book in a few hours, all the same day. It was dark when I was doing the last of it and I was working by the light of the campfire and a flashlight...so the case is a little crooked... and the whole thing has a lot of swell due to the nature its content...but that's ok.
I had a plan for this book beforehand, so I knew what I had to bring with me. The cover has real birch bark on it - collected during a hike earlier this summer. But the little window in the front cover was unplanned so I had to be resourceful finding material to use for the window pane. I ultimately settled on some cellophane-type-stuff from a cracker package. Why bother with the window? Well, the day before I made this book, Raland (my dh) discovered wild mussels in the waters by our campsite so he collected a big pot of mussels, boiled them on the campfire and ate them. Rather to his surprise, unlike cultivated mussels, wild mussels have pearls inside them and he nearly broke his teeth on every one of them. Ah, the memories! It was amusing... so I saved some of the little pearls and put them in this little window so they will rattle around in there forever... or as long as that cracker-box cellophane survives.
Inside the book, the content consists of all the papers and ticket stubs and whatever else I had. They are organized chronologically, and related stuff is grouped together of course. I wrote a few details on shipping tags and stuck those into each section.
I used some larger papers to create pockets in the middle of each signature, so the loose bits like ticket stubs and the shipping tags, etc, are tucked into those pockets. There are also a few pages that fold out, and stuff like that.
I've had people ask about getting monthly or daily agendas that start in September, rather than in January. So I made some. These are small, pocket-sized books. These mini monthly planners start in September 2009 and end in December 2011.
This daily planner is also mini, but chunky, at 3.5cm thick (1.5"). It has a full page for every day, so this one is great for really busy people with lots of appointments or lots of homework!
I was introduced to the concept and importance of "opening action" in a class with Gary Frost at PBI this year. I had never thought much about it before, but it made me very happy to learn about it and to learn why it is good and how it happens and all that good stuff. It also answers some questions that I've been asking myself.
The questions I've been asking myself are primarily concerned with exposed spine bindings like the chain stitch binding and some other similar sewings where the spine of the book is so often left unlined, but which historically would have been lined. I have made some of these chain stitch bindings (popularly termed "coptic") because they seemed to be very common and I thought I should keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. I was never happy with how the covers were just sewn on and just laid there, dead. I wondered if this was really alright, and how durable it would be, and wondered if I was missing something.
To show you what I mean, I made this little video of an exposed-spine chain stitch binding with a very dead cover:
It is dead because it has no relationship with the rest of the book; as if the cover and the book are entirely separate objects. In my class with Gary Frost, he talked at length about the "opening action" of books: the opening of the cover should facilitate the opening of the book. The cover and the text block should function together. In this class we made a book that demonstrated the opening action really well so I am beginning to understand what is happening.
I decided to try infusing life into this chain stitch binding with the dead cover. This is the result, showing the same book with opening action:
Achieving the opening action just requires a few extra steps and ultimately a covered spine. I prefer a covered spine anyway. The whole point of a book's covering is to protect the textblock, and an exposed spine isn't very well protected, is it?
For those of you who are now thinking, "oh no! the book won't open flat anymore," do not worry, it will still lie flat.
I made a couple of these chain stitch bindings with opening-action-improvements; however, I don't particularly like sewing the chain stitch binding so I started sewing onto raised cords instead, which, I think, is a more suitable binding for various reasons. And the raised cords look really cool.
The book shown here with the really dark brown cover is made from wooden boards given to me by Simon over at Paper Curious when we swapped a while back and I'm keeping that one. The others are made with wooden covers that my Dad prepared for me, thanks Dad! He made them using a variety of hardwoods: teak, oak, cherry, and maple. Those are available on Etsy.
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(Congratulations to the October winner: Brianna)
Thank you to everyone who has been following these Halloween Challenges and casting votes for my books! The Bookbinding Etsy Street Team actually had a tie for the award this year. 
