Unfinished Project #4 (Marbled Fore-edges)

There are always a few unfinished projects on the shelf. Usually, these unfinished projects are personal projects which get shelved when custom orders and other paid projects come along. I do, though, try to go back to the shelf of unfinished projects periodically, and finish things.

This particular project was started in May 2011. At that time, I was taking a class at PBI and for the work we were doing in that class, we had a bookbinding plough at our disposal. I don't have a plough at home, so I decided to take advantage of this temporary access. A plough is used to trim the edges of a text block, to create very smooth even edges. It is necessary for certain bindings and it is necessary for fore-edge decoration. I decided to create a couple of textblocks and plough the edges so that I could bring them home and marble them.

These two ploughed textblocks sat on the shelf of unfinished projects for almost two years, until February 2013. At that time, I blew off the dust, and finally marbled the edges of those two text blocks. I had never done fore-edge marbling before, but it worked pretty well. Once I had a marble pattern that I liked, I dipped the textblock and made a matching sheet of paper to be used later on the covers.

I quickly moved the dipped textblock into a press.

I did that with both textblocks and left them in the press until they were dry. Then the textblocks went back onto the shelf. Fast-forward to February 2014, and I finally found the time to turn the text blocks into books, with their matching marbled paper covers.

Now, another month later, I finally photographed the finished books and shared the whole story here. A very satisfying finished project, for sure, even if it did take me three years.

Unfinished Project #3

This unfinished project turned into 14 books. Several months ago I started to make these. I prepared all the pages and then got busy with orders and other projects and all those prepared pages were moved onto the shelf of unfinished projects. But here they are, finally.


Fourteen small hardcover journals with mixed papers for the pages. Each book is colour coordinated, so the purple book has a mixture of papers that includes lots of purple, and the blue book has a mixture of papers that includes lots of blue, etc. You get the idea. And I decided to use Japanese Chiyogami on all the covers. Most of the spines are book cloth, but a few are actually leather. Hardcover pamphlet structure; I love making these.


It will take a while to photograph each book individually for Etsy, but I did get a couple of them added to my shop today.

Unfinished Project #2

Several months ago, I stained a LOT of paper with tea. I had enough to make ten journals. So I sewed all the textblocks and then rounded and backed all of them. I started on the covers and finished seven then ran out of the leather I was using for the covers. So the three extra textblocks were put on the shelf of unfinished projects to be dealt with later.

Now they are finished! Not the same as the first seven since my cover material changed, but these turned out nice, nonetheless.



As usual, available on Etsy.
Another unfinished project is finished!
I've already started working on the next one.

Unfinished Project #1

I have shelves full of unfinished projects! Sound familiar? With a bit of extra time this weekend, I decided to finish some of them.

About a year ago, I made several books for someone who needed them to be a particular size and style. They all had plain covers made from Saint-Armand paper - here's a stack of the blue ones from that project:


There were also some done in red, navy, brown, and green.

While I was making these books, I made three covers that were the wrong size. Remember, measure twice, cut once! It's good advice. If I'd been more careful, I wouldn't have had three covers that didn't fit the contents. But - I did. I laid the extra covers on the shelf with the intention of using them for something... later. Later finally happened. It was awkward getting started, since normally I made the textblock first and then make a cover to fit it. This time, I was working from the other direction - the covers were ready and I had to make a textblock to fit into them.

The extra covers have been transformed into three blank notebooks, and the plain covers have been spiced up with some of my hand-marbled shipping tags and labels. The covers are made with turn-ins so they are quite strong. The binding on these notebooks is the "longstitch through a slotted cover" sewing.



Available on Etsy, of course.
One unfinished project finished... many more to go.