Celebrating Autumn Journal

The Trans Canada Etsy Team issued an Autumn Challenge a while ago, and now all the entires are online for voting! So go over to the team blog (transcanadaetsyteam.blogspot.com) and vote for #11! or #13! er, I mean, go vote for your favorite! This is my Autumn journal (#11 when you vote!) I cut a circle out of the front cover to create an enclosed window. The back of the window is lined with a piece of real birch bark, and then a small red maple leaf was placed inside before I sealed it over with a plastic transparency sheet. The birch bark is from that tree in the campground where I camped this past summer and there were big pieces of bark peeling off so I brought a bit home with me. The little red maple leaf, I picked last Fall from a tree near my house and pressed in a big book all year. The marbled paper on the covers is some that I hand marbled myself. There is also some handmade paper that I made, as the paste-down on the inside of each cover. My other submission for this challenge is this sheet of marbled paper - #13 when you vote!! Vote here: transcanadaetsyteam.blogspot.com And if you also leave a comment over there after you vote, there is a little giveaway for some lucky commenter (not here, over at the TCET blog)

More Marbling

I did some marbling recently so I want to share some of the results.
Cathedral Spanish Wave Diagonal stripes with antique spots Stones Free-form curl on a nonpareil Free-form curl on stones

Got fun boxes?

Well, if you are the sort of person who saves boxes because you think they look really cool... then you could make them into journals. I made this batch of books for a friend who has a tendancy to accumulate and save boxes. Definitely some fun things going on here. You followin' me camera guy? And another batch made from boxes that I had accumulated:

An old printshop

During our brief travels this summer, we visited Sherbrooke Village which is an historic village, and it has a printery. I had visited this village when I was a kid, but I did not remember there being a printshop. This time, however, it was the most interesting shop in town (although a bindery would have been even better).

Sherbrooke Village is just a regular town really, and in the 1960s the town decided to turn itself into a museum. So all the historic homes and shops were restored to their 1800s state. And although it's primarily a tourist attraction, some of the buildings like the church and courthouse, which are part of the historic village, are also still used by the larger community of Sherbrooke. There is a simple wooden fence around the historic village and on the other side of the fence within arm's reach, is the modern town of Sherbrooke with exhaust fumes and ATMs and all that good stuff. So it is an interesting juxtaposition.

They have all the things you would expect to find in an historic village like a blacksmith, a schoolhouse, a post office, a jail, the doctor's home and office, a pharmacy, the potter's barn, etc. But as I said, the printshop was a little highlight so I thought I'd share some of the photos that I took.


Chandler and Price in action

Many drawers of type

My kid, who might have mixed up some type, but I'm not admitting anything...

Back to School: Weekly Planners (and *free* book pendants)

Now I have weekly planners, as well as the monthly and daily planners that I mentioned before. Some people are very particular about their planners and it can make a big difference if you have space to write every day or not! My favorite planner is the "weekly" variety like these ones. These particular planners are 13-month agendas, starting Sept 2009 and ending Sept 2010. This is one designed to my own preferences concerning size, format, page layout, etc. So whether you like daily, weekly, or monthly, these might just work for you! And for the next month, I'm going to give away *free* mini leather journal pendants with every planner. Woot! Kinda like these ones:

Bookbinding in the bush

As I've mentioned before, I have a rather different approach to the "travel journal" concept. Rather than taking a blank book with me when I go away, I travel with no book, just a bag. I collect papers, postcards, tickets, maybe some random notes here and there, and end up with a bag of loose papers and brochures and other related paraphernalia. Then when I get home and get organized, I transform the paraphernalia into a book.

Recently, I made one of these "travel journals" for myself, using papers and materials that I collected over the summer with my family. We didn't have a big vacation, just a bunch of smaller weekend-type-stuff, but there are lots of memories to be kept nonetheless. I never seem to have time to make books for myself so this time, before we went on our last camping trip, I packed up everything I needed and took all the materials with me so that I could make the book while we were camping.

The camping/bookbinding studio:


I completed the book in a few hours, all the same day. It was dark when I was doing the last of it and I was working by the light of the campfire and a flashlight...so the case is a little crooked... and the whole thing has a lot of swell due to the nature its content...but that's ok.


I had a plan for this book beforehand, so I knew what I had to bring with me. The cover has real birch bark on it - collected during a hike earlier this summer. But the little window in the front cover was unplanned so I had to be resourceful finding material to use for the window pane. I ultimately settled on some cellophane-type-stuff from a cracker package. Why bother with the window? Well, the day before I made this book, Raland (my dh) discovered wild mussels in the waters by our campsite so he collected a big pot of mussels, boiled them on the campfire and ate them. Rather to his surprise, unlike cultivated mussels, wild mussels have pearls inside them and he nearly broke his teeth on every one of them. Ah, the memories! It was amusing... so I saved some of the little pearls and put them in this little window so they will rattle around in there forever... or as long as that cracker-box cellophane survives.


Inside the book, the content consists of all the papers and ticket stubs and whatever else I had. They are organized chronologically, and related stuff is grouped together of course. I wrote a few details on shipping tags and stuck those into each section.


I used some larger papers to create pockets in the middle of each signature, so the loose bits like ticket stubs and the shipping tags, etc, are tucked into those pockets. There are also a few pages that fold out, and stuff like that.

Starting fresh in September

I've had people ask about getting monthly or daily agendas that start in September, rather than in January. So I made some. These are small, pocket-sized books. These mini monthly planners start in September 2009 and end in December 2011. This daily planner is also mini, but chunky, at 3.5cm thick (1.5"). It has a full page for every day, so this one is great for really busy people with lots of appointments or lots of homework! Available on Etsy, of course.

Opening Action

I was introduced to the concept and importance of "opening action" in a class with Gary Frost at PBI this year. I had never thought much about it before, but it made me very happy to learn about it and to learn why it is good and how it happens and all that good stuff. It also answers some questions that I've been asking myself. The questions I've been asking myself are primarily concerned with exposed spine bindings like the chain stitch binding and some other similar sewings where the spine of the book is so often left unlined, but which historically would have been lined. I have made some of these chain stitch bindings (popularly termed "coptic") because they seemed to be very common and I thought I should keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. I was never happy with how the covers were just sewn on and just laid there, dead. I wondered if this was really alright, and how durable it would be, and wondered if I was missing something. To show you what I mean, I made this little video of an exposed-spine chain stitch binding with a very dead cover: It is dead because it has no relationship with the rest of the book; as if the cover and the book are entirely separate objects. In my class with Gary Frost, he talked at length about the "opening action" of books: the opening of the cover should facilitate the opening of the book. The cover and the text block should function together. In this class we made a book that demonstrated the opening action really well so I am beginning to understand what is happening. I decided to try infusing life into this chain stitch binding with the dead cover. This is the result, showing the same book with opening action: Achieving the opening action just requires a few extra steps and ultimately a covered spine. I prefer a covered spine anyway. The whole point of a book's covering is to protect the textblock, and an exposed spine isn't very well protected, is it? For those of you who are now thinking, "oh no! the book won't open flat anymore," do not worry, it will still lie flat. I made a couple of these chain stitch bindings with opening-action-improvements; however, I don't particularly like sewing the chain stitch binding so I started sewing onto raised cords instead, which, I think, is a more suitable binding for various reasons. And the raised cords look really cool. The book shown here with the really dark brown cover is made from wooden boards given to me by Simon over at Paper Curious when we swapped a while back and I'm keeping that one. The others are made with wooden covers that my Dad prepared for me, thanks Dad! He made them using a variety of hardwoods: teak, oak, cherry, and maple.

Water by George Erikson

An edition of 30 books, handbound for Nine Point Publishing:
Water by George Erikson.

This is one of the projects that kept me busy during the last few months and after several interruptions and delays, the production of the books was finally completed a couple weeks ago and today is the official publication date. This is a book of poetry which I handbound and then I made a matching Japanese-style wrap-around case for each. If you're interested in more about the process of making these, I posted a bit about these books previously, here and here.

This edition is available directly from Nine Point Publishing.

Making Recycled Paper

My kid and I recently made a couple batches of recycled paper. Most of the steps involved in the process are very attractive to four-year-olds. Using a paper shredder, using the blender, making a tub of mushy pulp, then splashing around in it! What could be more fun than that?

We started by sorting through my paper scraps, making a pile of brown and black papers, and another pile of pink and red papers. This is a great way to recycle paper scraps that are too small for anything else. After the papers were sorted, we shredded them.


The black pulp was rather dirty to work with but that didn't bother my little assistant. The pink pulp, he thought, was very similar to a strawberry smoothie.


The results of our labour: several sheets of dark grey and pink papers. The grey paper has a secret ingredient as it is intended for a special project, but that's all I'll say for now - more about that later!

What happened to July?

Ok, so this month I haven't been very good about posting to my blog! And somewhat suddenly, the month is over. So let's see, what has been happening? Last night I updated the Etsy Guide to Bookbinding Supplies to include Randy Arnold's new etsy shop where he is selling his handmade Ebony folding tools. I saw one of his ebony folders when I was at PBI - very nice work! A while ago, I got some cool clasps and closures from BlueFlameLeather. Last week, I was able to incorporate a couple of them into steampunk-style journals. None of those clasps are designed for use on books, so it requires some creative engineering to use them and sadly, in spite of all my planning, the clasp on the black hardcover book doesn't function properly. But it still looks pretty cool. All the other bits of hardware that I use are random bits of junk, also never meant to be used on books so the results are always unique. These books are for sale in my Etsy shop. And a Virtual Barbeque! Also - I should tell you about the BEST Virtual BBQ since you might be interested in winning a $30 gift certificate to spend on handmade books! The Etsy Bookbinding Team is hosting a Virtual BBQ Scavenger Hunt this weekend, August 1-3, and the winner gets a $30 gift certificate! All you need to do is browse the amazing offerings at 18 participating shops, locate hidden items and submit your finds to enter. You also get a chance to win for each purchase you make during the event. Check our the book team blog for details: etsybooks.blogspot.com

Eco Books

Another great bookbinding book about making books with recycled and repurposed materials. This one is from Lark and it's called "Eco Books" by Terry Taylor. I contributed some content to this book. It contains a total of 40 eco-book-making projects so it'll be a fun book to have if you like using different materials!


I also just got the most recent copy of Ampersand in my mailbox. There are always lots of great articles and how-tos in this journal so it's fun to get. This is the quarterly journal of the Pacific Center for the Book Arts and this particular issue has an article I wrote about selling handmade books online.

The Big Bible Repair

This gigantic Bible recently appeared in my studio. As you can see, it is in three pieces. I do not do much book repair because I find it hard on my nerves; however, this belongs to a church and the people seeking its repair are friends of my family... so I agreed to tackle it. The actual publication date is unknown but it was likely purchased in 1927 based on an inscription on the inside.


When it arrived, I was very happy to see that the sewing was entirely sound. Phew. To resew this sort of thing, I would require direct word from God before I would even consider it. Reattaching the first few pages and the cover, I could probably handle.

The first few pages were easy to reattach. The pages were whipped-stitched together; they were loose sheets rather than a folded section, and I think it was originally just tipped in. So I tipped it in again. Then I cooked up some paste and started working on reattaching the cover. I couldn't find any material to really match the Bible's original cover. I picked up some strong black cloth and made myself a piece of bookcloth to use - not a great match but it worked. I lifted the cover material along the spine edge of the front cover, and along the edge of the spine and worked my book cloth under the original covering so only a narrow strip of the new material is actually visible.


I also used some linen repair tape on the inside and was able to cover it up with some of the original paper used in the Bible so the repair tape isn't visible at all. Now that it is finished, the Bible does seem to be better then when I started.


There was an interesting tidbit tucked inside this Bible. This small piece of paper was obviously included when the Bible was originally purchased and explains how to properly open a book. Quite right too, perhaps this instructional bit should be included with books more often.

re-bound

There is a new book published by Quarry Books: re-bound by Jeannine Stein. And I'm in it! This is an instructional book that focuses on making books using entirely recycled and upcycled materials. I was pretty excited to see this book is now available.

The book includes sixteen fully illustrated bookmaking projects, ideas for gathering materials and supplies, as well as a "beautiful gallery of other rebound creations by leading artists offering further inspiration" and that's where you can see a bit of my work in there!

Happy Canada Day

July 1st is Canada Day! Canada is 142 years old, so have a drink for Canada. And... is there any better way to celebrate a country and its heritage and its achievements, then by having a sale? A sale especially for Canadians? Great idea!

I'm offering 1 cent shipping to all locations in Canada from MyHandboundBooks and MyMarbledPapers. So, just 1 penny for shipping until midnight July 1st (or whenever I get home from the fireworks and celebration, whichever is later)!