The first time that I participated in the Volcano Arts blank book swap, the book I received had ceramic covers, made by Bley Hack. Both front and back covers are ceramic, with a star detail on front, and it is bound using a chain stitch.
I showed this little book to my aunt, Ellen Fisher, who is a potter. This is a little collection of her work:
After I showed her Bley's book, she accepted the challenge and made a few ceramic book covers for me to play with. Each cover has a different detail. Shown here are the swirl, goose, and owl.
Only the front covers of our books are ceramic. I made the back covers with binder's board - this reduced their weight compared with Bley's book - as an attempt to make them a bit more practical. And they still weigh about 0.5 kg (about 1 lb) each. All of ours are bound using the Coptic stitch.
So I listed four ceramic books in
my Etsy shop. The three above are still for sale, but this turtle book found a new home and it was actually the first non-leather book that I ever sold on Etsy.
Ok, so they are breakable. Who would want a breakable journal?! Doesn't matter, they are original and fun and different, that's what matters!
I can always justify buying supplies, and I had recently ordered a few items from Volcano Arts. There is really nowhere in this city to buy bookbinding supplies, other than a few basics. So I got some great new colours of linen thread. I also got a bunch of silver corner pieces - which means I can finally finish a project I've been working on for ages.
Now, an online purchase that was entirely unnecessary, was this little collection of wooden printers blocks! I don't need these. I have no idea what I am going to do with them. But they are great! I bought these on Etsy from Sweetkate who has more of these and I am trying to think of a reason to buy them too.
My Great Aunt sent a book to my son, the new children's book, "That Stripy Cat." The author of this book lives in Halifax (same city as me) and the illustrator, Tara Anderson, I have met her through Etsy. My aunt didn't know that, it's just a fun coincidence. I have one of Tara's paintings on the wall in my kitchen actually. Check out her stuff on Etsy, where she has lots of stripy cats. Her shop is GingercatPress.Etsy.com
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.
