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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hand-bound Books, Journals, and Boxes

My sister-in-law is an art teacher and quite an artist as well.  She's responsible for me learning how to make hand-bound books. She also got me hooked on buying books about making books! lol  Here are some that I've made:
I made this journal for my trip to Ireland last year. My friend Susie suggested I keep a journal as we traveled. That was such a great idea Suze!  When it came time to do the scrapbooks of the trip, my journaling was all done:)
I keep notes about my wardrobe in this one - care labels and tags. Yeah, kinda OCD, but I forget. Besides I cut the tags out of my clothes because they itch my neck!!
This one has all my colored pencil notes, articles and color charts in it.  I kind of cheated on this binding, as I used a roll-o-bind machine. 
When giving a box of cards to a friend as a gift, I like to include some greetings.  I used to print them on parchment, cut them apart, and put them in an envelope.  I decided this was a lot of work for the recipient, because they'd have to sort through the greetings and then glue them in.  I recently decided it might be better to make a little book of greetings, and they could write in their own.  In a box of cards, I gave one to a friend for her birthday recently and she loved it!
Tag book.
I wrote Haiku poetry on each tag. Teaching 5th graders made this fun, cause they have to learn how to write poetry and when they see their teacher do it, they are more interested.  Last year, I helped each kid make their own poetry book.  They made Japanese stab-bound books like the rose one above.  Took us a few days, but the kids loved their creations.

These are the tags found inside each envelope page.
 This is old and I love it. I decided to show it to you because you may not know the story behind it. It's a Victorian Needle Box.  They are usually made of cardboard and covered with fabric.  Each portion inside would have pockets and hooks to hold thread, needles etc.  Several years ago, someone inked and stamped on one and it was published in Somerset Studio magazine.  When I saw it, I HAD to have one!  The only place I could find one at that time was from a lady in northern Canada.  She had to wait until the pass cleared in the spring when the mail began running again!  I had to trace the pattern, cut and assemble the thing from scratch. What a chore that was! Now they sell the template for making these all over the place, and they are even already cut out of cardboard for you.
Inside the last pyramid is another box, a square, where the thimble was stored.  Mine had little charms and beads in it that I had forgotten were there!