Wrapping up 2023 with little boxes

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, season's greetings, happy solstice, lovely day! Take your pick!

I tried one final little project for the end of the year, involving folding pretty paper to make little boxes. I tried a variety of origami box structures looking for one that might work for packing up some little books. I had two main requirements for the boxes. Firstly, the miniature books needed to fit in the box, and secondly, I wanted the box to have a lid.

Initially I thought it should be a rectangular box so I attempted several rectangular boxes but couldn't get the dimensions quite right. I also tried a little box with a window (seen at the top of the tower), which I really like, but I wanted more lid.

After quite a lot of trial and error, I settled on the standard origami Masu Box. I've seen a couple different ways to make a Masu Box. There's one method where you start by folding the paper into thirds. Then, there's another method (more common, probably) where you start by folding the paper in half diagonally like these simple instructions here. I used this version, since it was easier to tweak it and make a well-fitting lid. These are the final boxes that were the best sizes and had the best lids:


Only eleven posts on my blog this year, sheesh. As usual, I'll sign off 2023 by saying that I'll try to post more often in the new year!

NSBAG Book Swap

A few weeks ago, the Nova Scotia Book Arts Group hosted its first book swap. Anyone in the group who wanted to participate just had to make a blank book, bring it to the meeting in November, and then they got someone else's handmade book to take home. I've been participating in various book swaps for years. Christine Cox, of Volcano Arts, used to host book swaps which were done online and through the mail and those were the first swaps I did. Later I found several other occassions to participate in swaps and exchanges for blank books, marbled paper, and artist's books. Many of these have been documented here on my blog over the years if you want to scroll back and find some of my old posts.

For the recent NSBAG swap, I made this half leather binding with my own marbled paper on the covers. The structure is a traditional library style binding constructed with split boards and sewn headbands.


There were 17 participants in the swap so there was an impressive range of bookbinding techniques and materials represented. You can see all of the books on the NSBAG blog.