Blue Gingham Cookbook

My cookbooks have always sold better than my journals.  Why this is, I'm not really sure.  I've used books that were nominally 'journals' for recipe books in the past, and they worked just fine... Maybe it's just nice to have a special-purpose book; makes the activity feel more special.  Anyway, we were are the G-dub a few months ago and stumbled across a bag full of fabric remnants for just a few bucks, and going through it I kept thinking, "this would make great bookcloth".  So we bought it.

 I did something a little bit different this time though; instead of using this blue gingham fabric as a spine, I thought why not use it as a cover?  Gingham with a nice cherry blossom pattern on the inside would be very cookbook-y, has a great country feel to it, and is probably nice and durable too.

So that's what I did.  I used a Coptic-stitch binding, which I haven't done in a while as I've been developing my other binding techniques, and journal paper (because I ran out of recipe paper).  It turned out pretty nice!

This book is for sale!  Check it out on my Etsy shop!

Cherry Blossoms Journal

Ahh, cherry blossoms, a beautiful and unmistakable sign of spring... When I was in college, I used to walk through my campus, which was home to some 60 Japanese cherry trees donated by our sister city in Japan, and enjoy the cherry trees blossoming like pink popcorn, until they reached their full bloom and started blowing off in the breeze... Is it any wonder that Japanese culture reveres the cherry blossom and its aesthetic quality so much?

I thought a nice way to celebrate spring would be to make a cherry blossom themed journal. It took me a while to find good cover paper for it, and I ended up finding it at Michael's of all places. But while the cover paper is beautiful, I think it still needed something else... So I used some pearlescent white paper for inner covers, white crinkle paper for end leaves, and navy blue cloth for the spine.

 

I really like how this book turned out. If I had a use for yet another journal I would likely keep it for myself... But just like there's no hoarding spring, we shouldn't hoard the things that we create either. What is the point of making something beautiful, whether it be art or music or crafts, if not for all to enjoy?

 

This book is for sale!  Check it out on my Etsy shop :)

Penguin Sketchbook

I haven't made many books lately, I know. Life has been very uncooperative the last couple of months. I have made a couple of books, but due to errors they weren't going to be very sellable, or something I wanted to show off. But finally it's coming back together and I've had time to make a book or two.

This sketchbook cover is made from a poster from a puzzle box, given to me by my girlfriend. The paper unfortunately has crease marks from where it was folded, but other than that it's a great cover. I love penguins.

I learned a lot about my new book construction technique by doing this book. The process of gluing the covers together with bookcloth, gluing the codex in, then gluing on the inner covers and end leaves takes a lot more precision than I realized at first, and indeed I glued it all in wrong the first time, resulting in the codex spine folding where I didn't want it to fold and my having to disassemble and re-glue it.

The end result though, after two tries, is very nice. I quite like the double bookcloth cover, kind of reminiscent of a double matte for a painting. It's sewn together nicely, and quite sturdy.

This book is for sale! Buy it on Etsy today! :)

Egyptian Brew Journal

In addition to making books, I also enjoy spending some of my free time brewing beer. It's a hobby I've only recently picked up, and when learning something new, I've always found it handy to keep detailed notes on what I'm doing. I've also been developing my baking skills, which I also want to take notes on. So I got the idea to make a brewing and baking journal.

But what to put on it, and what to make it out of? The Egyptians may not have been the first to brew beer, but they were the biggest brewers of the ancient world. Wages were paid in bread and beer--the original two great tastes that taste great together. I had recently found a fabric scrap at the thrift store that I thought had a kind of pharaoh's headdress look to it, now all I needed was a good cover image.

This is where my pretty artist girlfriend came in. She too is a great fan of ancient Egypt, so she volunteered to draw something for me that I could use for a cover. After some brainstorming we decided on a tomb painting style wall depicting baking and brewing, drawn with colored pencil onto a nice red sand colored mi-tientes paper.

The result is quite lovely. I made covers out of it and used the cloth mentioned earlier for the spine, and glued in my long-stitched codex and dark brown crinkle paper end leaves.

Other details: I used fusible webbing to bind the cloth to its backing paper, a new technique for me, but I'm happy with the results. I also printed my own journal paper, which I've been doing for a while, but this paper has a nice triple-mountain pattern on the bottom, which gives it a nice pro looking quality.

Botanical Ceramics NW Design Book

This is a book I made for Christmas for my girlfriend's sister, who runs a home ceramics business.  She is forever doing new, creative things with clay, and I thought she might enjoy a design book to sketch new ideas in.  This book was built a lot like my last book, but of course is a completely different style.

The sparkly purple front cover (which, after taking these photos, I added the Botanical Ceramics logo in silhouette to) is made from one of my favorite book cover materials, a gift bag.  I also added some punk girl ribbon to spice it up a bit.

The back cover is the same material but no logo or ribbon.

The sewing is heavyweight hemp cord...

And the inside cover is an eggplant colored linen paper.  The drawing paper is again 80 lb. drawing paper cut to 18x12 and folded in half.

Map of America Sketchbook

This is a book I made for Christmas for my girlfriend's father, who is an artist and a map-maker at the USGS.  In that spirit, I thought a durable sketchbook he could draw in while taking the bus to work would be a nice gift, and found a plastic-covered map of the United States at Goodwill that I thought might make a nice cover.

I've never worked with this particular material for covers before, and it was harder to work than I thought.  The cover ended up with bubbles I wasn't able to work out, as the glue didn't adhere very well to the plastic covering.  The upshot to this is that it is very durable, water resistant and scuff resistant.

For the inside cover I used a nice blue damask patterned paper...

The pages are 18x12 80 lb. drawing paper (folded in half for a final page size of 9x12), cut to size from 18x24 original paper that I buy in bulk.

I learned a lot about my stitching technique using alternating colors for each section.  If you're not happy with your Coptic stitch, I recommend doing a black/white alternation.

Snowy Mountain Book w/Cloth Spine / Making Bookcloth

Something I've been wanting to do for a while is use bookcloth in a book.  I enjoy the look and feel of a quarter-bound book--cloth really gives a book a feeling of permanence, to me.  I've also thought for a while that by using my long-stitch sewing technique to bind the pages to heavy paper or card, and gluing the card to a cover, I can create a sturdier book than many traditionally-bound books, and one that would be easier to re-bind if necessary, since there's no paste or glue on the signatures.

Bookcloth, however, is quite expensive!  $8 for an 18x19" sheet at my local art store.  I might get two full-bound books out of that, or perhaps a dozen quarter-bound, but even if price weren't an issue, I'd still be limited to the 4 colors that they have on hand.  For some reason I never thought to myself, "self, why don't you make your own bookcloth?" until recently... it's pretty simple to do too (sorry no pictures!):

1. Select a cloth.  It should be woven fairly tight; muslin is excellent.  Wash if necessary and iron it as flat as you can.
2. Using a foam brush, get a sheet of paper (I used copy paper for this book, but it was a little heavier than would be ideal) covered in a thin, even layer of PVA glue.  Don't skimp on the glue!  If the paper warps a little bit from it, you're doing fine.  Allow the glue to set slightly--a couple of minutes is great for PVA--but not to dry.
3. Lay the cloth on top of the paper, turn over so the front side of the cloth is down, lay it on a piece of wax paper, and roll with a rubber roller or even a rolling pin.  Turn it over to make sure the bubbles are pressed out and the cloth is nice and flat.  If not, roll it some more.
4. Dry flat between two boards.  Cut to size with a rotary cutter and enjoy!

The first book I made with this bookcloth was not to sell, but actually a functional book for myself, to track what bills I have and haven't paid each month.  I went with plain paper, and a cover made from the picture in an Oregon-themed calendar.

You can see I did goof slightly and made the cloth part of the spine too narrow, thus having to glue the cover on a little far out.  I'll have to remember to add a half inch or so of extra space for the spine in the future.

I dig how the top of the long-stitch sewing looks just a little bit like a headband!  A few more decorative stitches and it would look great... perhaps on my next one.