2019 Weekly Planners

I have my leather Weekly Planners ready for 2019! Currently available in my Etsy shop in these awesome colours: red, blue, yellow, green, brown, and distressed brown. Never too soon to start getting your new year organized.

Summer School

I taught two very different workshops in August. First, I went to Cleveland, OH to teach a workshop at The Morgan Conservatory. At this workshop, I taught the students a structure called the Library Binding. We did the books in quarter leather with marbled papers on the boards. The Library Binding is a very practical structure, and often overlooked (I think) as an option for binding. It was developed as a way of reducing costs and speeding up the traditional handbinding techniques used in the 1800s, while still producing a very sound and attractive binding for heavily used books. A few of the students in this workshop had never made a book before and this was not an easy binding for their first book! The books turned out great, though. Here are a few of the books made in the class:

Later in the month, I spent a few days at Sherbrooke Village in Nova Scotia where I conducted a rather comprehensive introduction to bookbinding over three days. The Sherbrook Village Writer's Guild had asked me to do this workshop for them, so I customized the various projects with them in mind. They were really immersed in the world of bookbinding over the three days and produced so many books! These are just some of the books they made. I definitely did not get photos of all their books, there were too many; but, this should give you an idea of how much they accomplished:

Inventory sale!

Over the last few years, I have taught a lot of bookbinding classes. Every time I teach a class, I make samples of the books beforehand and then make them again during the workshop. As such, I have accumulated a pile of books that are starting to create a storage problem. And I really need only one or two samples of any particular binding.

So -- I have just listed 25 books in my etsy shop. They are all at least half price, and I'm offering FREE shipping to Canada and USA. If you ever wanted a nice handmade book, here's your chance! Or if you are one of my bookbinding or marbling friends and you think you might like to trade something, I am totally up for that!

Follow this link to see all the books on sale: https://tinyurl.com/25handmadebooks.

Bookbinding Materials and Techniques 1700-1920

Bookbinding Materials and Techniques 1700-1920 by Margaret Locke is a book published by CBBAG and it can be purchased bound or in sheets (available through the CBBAG website if you're interested). I purchased an unbound copy ages ago. The sheets sat on my "shelf of unfinished projects" for a couple years, actually. I bound it, finally. Using a split board library binding, quarter leather, and my own original marbled papers. I even marbled the edges of the textblock to match. Now I can read it!

Converting an adhesive bound paperback to a sewn hardcover

I taught an interesting workshop this weekend. A few of my regular students had asked me about this technique in the past, so we decided to offer a workshop on it. The goal was to convert a glued paperback to a sewn binding with a hardcover. This technique is not meant for small pocket paperbacks but more for larger, heavier books like trade paperback editions, cookbooks, dictionaries and some textbooks where the softcover, adhesive binding has a tendency to crack and break. This is a typical example of what happens to these heavy glued bindings:

We started by taking our books apart and removing as much of the old glue as possible and the pages have to be grouped into sections for sewing. We sewed our textblocks onto flat linen sewing supports as per so many other binding methods. The main difference was the extra whip-stitching used to bind each section of pages. It is not a pretty sewing.

That was the hard stuff. Then it was just a matter of rounding and backing, constructing a case and casing-in like any other case binding. Most of the students in my class had some bookbinding experience but one of the students had never bound a book before and hers turned out beautifully, as did all the others! Most were quarter cloth with marbled paper, and one was bound in full cloth. The blue book in the next photo is the one made by the first-time binder. Pretty impressive. And she marbled that paper herself too!

These ones even got the titles on the spine, which is a nice touch.

And here's the full cloth version, and another of the quarter cloth with marbled paper.

Very impressed with all their finished books!

Congratulations to my winners!

Congratulations to Nancy Akerly and Morag Schonken who are the winners of my 2018 Weekly Planner Giveaway! From my facebook page, my blog, and related twitter follows, I had 110 entries. I made a list and numbered all the entries and then used random.org to pick two numbers which corresponded with Nancy's and Morag's entries! Thanks everyone, for your interest!

2018 Weekly Planner Giveaway!

Happy New Year! I'm going to start off this year with a giveaway!

I made a batch of these hardcover 2018 weekly planners for the holiday market season last Fall. I have two left. I want to give them away while there is still time for them to be useful to someone.

So, if you like this offline method of keeping track of your life, leave me a comment here to have your name entered into a draw to win one of them. I will draw two names on January 31st. You can also follow me on Twitter (@rhondamillerMHB) to get two entries into the draw. I will also collect entries on my Facebook page. The first name will get the beige planner, and the second name will get the teal & orange planner.

These are handbound, hardcover books. The cover features my own original Suminagashi marbling and the year printed in gold or silver foil. There is a ribbon bookmark and a two-page spread for every week. Book size is about 18cm x 10.5cm (or 7" x 4").

Comments are now closed. Winners will be announced shortly.