Elizabeth Sanford is a watercolor artist who was seduced several years ago by the book arts. She is fond of flexicubes and teaches at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville, TN.I love Andrea Dezso's work (www.andreadezso.com), so when I saw that she was teaching a tunnel book class at PBI, I had to sign up! We learned 3 tunnel structures: the Jennifer, the Stephanie and the Luminitza.
My favorite was the first one, the Jennifer, so I spent most of the workshop on that one. It's a structure that Andrea invented that involves sewing the panels to the accordion sides so that they almost float. If you look carefully, you should be able to spot the silhouette of a bird (a yellow-billed cuckoo) in the front panel; there's another hiding in the branches on the second panel.
I started cutting these panels with an x-acto knife but switched to a scalpel in the middle of this model, and it was so much easier! I got mine from the PBI store run by Nancy Morains (here's her website: www.colophonbookarts.com/binding.html). I'm also interested in trying the kind of Olfa knife with carbon steel blades that Andrea uses.
The other 2 approaches are based on commercially printed books. The Stephanie is adapted from Winnie-the-Pooh's Pop-up Theatre Book (1993). The panels are attached with tabs at the top and bottom, and it folds flat. Here's my model in the open position:
The Luminitza is a 4 layer pattern based on a German book published in 1878. Here's Andrea's diagram, which reveals some of her humor:
I'm currently working on a more complicated version of the first model. Here are the 5 panels:
I'm planning to have more space between the panels this time so it will be easier to find the creatures that are hiding in the woods.
You can vote for this book (or whichever book you like most) over at the BEST Blog.
AND - the Trans Canada Etsy Street Team is also having a Halloween challenge this week! Same idea, except that this team consists of a wide range of artisans and crafters, not just book artists. So the collection of halloween items is wonderfully wide-ranging! For this challenge, I submitted my Macbeth journal which has the witches' chant on the back cover, printed onto some of my handmarbled paper - and an illustration from an old storybook on the front cover.
So now hop on over to the Trans Canada blog to vote for this book (or whichever item you like best, of course!)
If you leave comments on either of those blogs, there are little surprises to be won by some random commenters, so be sure to leave a comment in both places! Happy Halloween...
It has never crossed my mind that there might be bookbinding videos on YouTube. I don't use the site very often unless someone else has recommended a particular video. Thanks to Christine Cox's newsletter from Volcano Arts, I am now very busy watching the collection of book arts-related videos available on YouTube. I've viewed a lot of them now and some are promotional, some are very badly made, some are not worth watching. In spite of all that, there are a few good ones that I want to annotate here. Blue and sage leathers inlaid, lined on the inside with handmade paper. Long stitch binding through the spine and decorative stitching on the covers in white linen.  Hardcover multi-signature coptic sewing. Black leather with raised letters on the front.  Portfolio case custom fit to this book. I backed the fabric myself. Leather label on the spine with gold lettering.  Japanese box. Dark green book cloth with paper lining. This is now my bookbinding toolbox.  Japanese wrap-around case, custom fit to these two Japanese butterfly books.  Rebound copy of Jonson's Lives of the Poets. Leather spine and new cloth covers. I found this cloth at a drapery store and backed it myself. Leather label on the spine with gold lettering.  Rebound copy of the Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music. This was originally a perfect-bound paperback. Brown bookcloth spine and hand marbled papers. Leather label on the spine with gold lettering.  Rebound copy of The Cat in the Hat. Scanned then printed the image for the new front covers.  One of my first attempts at making a girdle book.  'Our Stars' - Accordian fold artist's book with flaps and pockets, pull-out tags, found images, and quotes.  Japanese multi-page scroll.  Accordian fold with little pamphlets sewn into some of the valleys. This was made as a birthday card with photos and text.  Little Red Riding Hood tunnel book. A case structure, with the tunnel book attached on one side and a pamphlet containing the story attached to the other side.  Expirimental binding: sections sewn onto stiff hemp twine. Leather cover.  Photo album and matching photo storage box. Japanese chyiogami paper.  Japanese stab bindings, hemp leaf pattern. |
