Seems like I should start every blog post apologizing for such long delays between posts! At the moment, I've just come to post a bit about some of the workshops I've been conducting recently.
Last week, I taught a workshop called "Tricky Books and Boxes." We made a little video to demonstrate the tricky boxes.
For the tricky books, we started with a few little structures that involve mostly folding and a little bit of cutting. There was a one-sheet folded book, a non-cyclic tetra-hexa-flexagon, a little woven accordion that opens two different ways, and a panel book. For the panel book, we used a template created by Cathryn Miller of Byopia Press, which she has posted to her blog and she kindly permitted me to share it with everyone in my workshop.
After all that, we also made a Jacob's Ladder book.
And the last book we made was this, which I'd seen on Alisa Golden's blog, for which she includes the name "Flat-Style Australian Reverse Piano Hinge" binding. It is also basically the same as a technique I learned from Emma Fraser, who lives in Scotland, and we named her book the "Secret Scottish Rubbish Binding" since we were using repurposed papers at the time. So this structure has some international representation.
This book I made for today uses another structure devised by Hedi Kyle. It is an accordion that has a (apparent) floating panel at each of the mountain peaks. Perfect for displaying these illustrations that I salvaged from a discarded book which depict the very dated antics of Freddie and Flossie Bobbsey -- each with a helpful and descriptive caption, like, "Freddie was busy emptying ashtrays."
People have been making these fancy folded puzzles for hundreds of years and for a variety of purposes - inculding love letters and Valentines. For mine, I printed the one that is shown on Nancy Rosin's website where you can also find instructions for folding. Happy Valentine's Day!
The little book I made for today is based on the folded multi-page book that Alisa Golden devised and presented on her blog. It is a handy structure made from one sheet of paper and you can print your content all on one side of the paper then with a bit of folding and cutting - you get a booklet with seven page-spreads.
Today's book is a simple structure of folded pages that are pasted to each other in a cascading fashion. I really like this for displaying certain types of content.
Today I have a book that is a mashup of an accordion book and a flexagon. It can be opened and displayed like a basic accordion, but it can also be folded and rearranged into the format shown in the second photo.
Another flexagon today. Again made from a single sheet of paper, folded so that it can be flexed to reveal different faces. This one has more faces that the one I showed yesterday. As well, yesterday's flexagon structure required one little bit of glue to hold it together whereas today's flexagon is completely non-adhesive.
Today's structure is a simple flexagon. Flexagons allow a number of faces to be revealed, depending on how they are folded and unfolded. There are many ways to make a flexagon if you search online; but, if you investigate flexagons too much, it becomes a very elaborate mathematical challenge to make more complicated flexagons with more faces and using different shapes (be careful)!
There are some good books about flexagons like "The Magic of Flexagons" if you want to really get into it.
After making yesterday's modular origami accordion, I was curious if I could make a book using just two of the origami panels as covers. This is the result after arranging folded pages into the folds of the main structure.
Using a modular origami technique, I created another nifty accordion book. The lovely thing about this origami structure is that it creates its own photo-corners so you can easily tuck pictures into each panel.
I have moved far away from the historic bookbinding techniques for today. The accordion is a very old book structure, of course, but here is a more recent innovation... making the pages using envelopes. The flap of each envelope is used to attach one page to the next. The covers are standard bookboard covered with decorative paper (these are some book pages that I marbled) and the book's content can be tucked into the envelopes - simple and tidy!
Today's book is obviously another origami book. This one consists of five folded squares, attached to each other in such a way that it fans open like a book. This one has no content but there are various page arrangements, and by folding and unfolding segments, can make for interesting content display.
For today's book, the cover is made using the same folding technique as yesterday's booklet. This time, though, a signature is sewn into the middle fold to create a single-section notebook and all those little pockets are still available for storing various odds and ends.
Once again, my book of the day is a folded structure of Hedi Kyle's invention. As you can see, my closed booklet is very unassuming, but inside there are several nooks and crannies for tucking or attaching other papers.
Helen Hiebert's book, Playing With Paper, has instructions for making this structure.
This was entirely new to me until just a few days ago and it was fun to experiment with it. This fishbone fold structure is another technique from Hedi Kyle with instructions on the Green Chair Press blog.
This little dos-a-dos structure is a variation of a simple single-sheet booklet, modified to have two sets of pages and in this particular example I have added mat board for a hardcover on front and back. View instructions from Green Chair Press. Another good resource for this and similar structures is Helen Hiebert's book, Playing With Paper.
This little book is made using three origami water lilies with a hardcover. Bound & Lettered (Vol. 5 No. 1) has instructions for making this little book.
Another folded book structure where the spine is made from a single piece of folded paper and then pages are inserted into the folds. The instructions to make this structure were in the most recent issue of Bound & Lettered (Vol. 12 No. 1), so I had to try it.
