Pay It Forward

I recently started reading Kaija's blog, Paperiaarre, where she has posted photos of some amazing handmade books. A few days ago I joined her PIF exchange and now it is my turn to share this with my blog readers.One of Kaija's books
Pay It Forward (via Kaija, Denna, Sia and so on) - here are the rules:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

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For anyone who is interested, Wikipedia has an interesting entry for the concept of paying it forward including some history as to the origin of the concept. The main definition given is an expression "used by a creditor who offers the debtor the option of paying a debt forward to a third person instead of paying it back. Debt and payments can be monetary or by good deeds."

Secret Belgian Binding

The Secret Belgian Binding was my next project on the list of historical bindings to do. I wish I knew more about the history of this binding; there is very little information available online and none of my books have any details.

I learned this in a class with Susan Mills. I believe the binding was unearthed by Hedi Kyle, and it has been dated between the 14th and 16th centuries. Story is, this type of binding had been long lost and forgotten until Hedi came upon it and she figured out how it was done. It is thought that it was a special binding method of a particular binder so it was never widely known. If you have any more authoritative information about this, please let me know. Don't bother sending me the Wikipedia link because I wrote that myself.

Now I remember why it has been so long since I did it. It's too tedious! But, nonetheless, I persevered and completed these two black and whites this week. I cheated a little bit. The covers are covered with self-adhesive papers - so I didn't have to wait for any glue or paste to dry. But they turned out fine, the proportions are nice, at 480 pages thick, and nice to hold. I still don't want to start making them very often, though.