sunday

and suddenly it seems summer has arrived... after grey for so long, there's colour everywhere :)

And warm sunshine shining through the trees... 

saturday

Well today is a lovely sunny day, so I'm going to take these...

out here...

and do not much at all except laze about! Hurray for weekends :)

second attempt

A while ago I made a 'secret belgium' bound book for a friend's birthday. I found the binding a bit tricky, but after receiving some helpful comments on different ways of construction I had another go...

This time I sewed the book block first using plastic strips as tapes, then constructed the cover around the book block hooking the thread under the plastic strips and connecting the whole lot together at once (thank you Mary!)

 

I must admit though, I still found it a bit tricky :) And although this time the cover seemed easier, the pages feel a bit wobbly... Perhaps a mixture of the two methods should be my next experiment; sew the book block, use it to sew the covers to the correct tension and then sew the pages to the spine and tighten it all up... third time lucky?

2 books

Ooops! Well, I never meant to be away for this long... I'm not sure what I've been doing really, I've certainly not got much to show for my time away, I feel to have spent most of it at work! It's getting really close to the end of term now, and although I'm trying not to let students stress transfer onto me, I'm sure it's not really entirely possible. Oh, why do we always seem to leave things to the last minute?? (And I most certainly include myself in that statement...)

Anyway. 

I've started going to yoga again, and swimming too, but I'm still in the oh-this-is-making-me really-tired phase. Roll on phase 2 (the whoo-hoo-i'm-full-of-energy-hurray phase, and as yet, un-reached in my life so far, but I know its out there...)

So, two little books. 

The pages of the first one are sewn in using pamphlet stitch, starting on the outside of the covereach time and leaving the ends fairly long. I like it :)

But, I thought it might be nice to have the knot without the dangly ends, and so instead of cutting the thread after the first page I just kind of carried on going... I used a kind of kettle stitch to tie off the thread at the end of each page, and it seems to work!

 

I'm pleased with this book as it's the first binding I feel I've really thought of for myself, without seeing a picture first or peeking at instructions. It just seemed to come to me, and even though I'm pretty sure it's nothing new at all (I'm not that tired) I'm still happy as it means my brain is still working. Always a good thing :)

experiments

Some exposed spine mockups, just practicing...

And... I still haven't quite learnt the lesson I keep trying to teach myself (that is: if I don't cut the boards right at the beginning they probably (probably!) will not be right at the end) Oh dear...

(but at least I'm practicing Mary :) ) Oh well!

more concertinas

So tomorrow turned into a few days, as these things often do at the moment... but today I've managed to get at least a bit organized, and here are some pictures (slightly dodgy camera phone pictures, but pictures none the less) of the books I made at the art gallery last Thursday...

A concertina book; a good opportunity to show a few different ways to fold accurate concertinas, as from my experience this can be harder than it sounds! I also thought it would be good to show a few different ways of making a cover, this a soft cover that kind of wraps round its self and then slots over the end page...

No glue in this structure :)

I tried to take a kind of mix-and-match approach; showing lots of different foldings, page elements and ways to attach them...

This is a hard cover blizzard book (another good opportunity for folding practice...)

Mine is a bit scruffy, I was a bit nervous book making in front of so many people!

I love this structure, with it's slotty in pages... you can find the instructions in this book along with lots of other lovely things :)

At the end of the class the participants all seemed pleased with their books, but by the end of the day I realized that the class was far too short for everything I wanted to show, I felt like I could go on for days and not be done with all the possibilities of these structures... Perhaps more classes are in order :)

gratuitous concertina...

This is the first time blogger has let me upload a photo all week... very frustrating!

Yesterday I ran a workshop at leeds city art gallery, in conjunction with the 'from book to book exhibition'. I wasn't quite sure what the people attending the class would be expecting (having never done this kind of thing before!) so I tried to show a variety of binding elements and how they can be combined to create different kinds of book...

Everyone seemed to have a good day, and I was concentrating so hard (and nattering on :) ) that I didn't take a single photograph, ooops. But I've got the structures I made, so tomorrow I'll take some pictures of those and hope that blogger cooperates!