Books Without Moths

I was going to continue with more pictures and blathering about my book moth print, but I think I'll save that for when I have some other things done with them that I have planned . . .

Instead, here are some little books I've made lately. As you may or may not know, I write for Handmade News and I've been doing a sort of Bookbinding 101, working through structures from simple to more complex. The last several tutorials have been on variations of the pamphlet binding, which is a surprisingly versatile structure.

This first photo is, of course, just a plain little pamphlet with a cardstock cover. That's where I started the series, so people could first learn the pamphlet stitch. Learn that, and you can make your own chapbooks.

These next two are variations with fold-over covers. The green one underneath folds right around to hide the stitching and close the book, while the cream one only folds around to close, leaving the stitching exposed. I decided to sew it with ribbon instead of thread, for decorative effect, and essentially sewed it inside-out so the knot ended up on the outside, again for decoration. The green one is actually one I made in intro bookbinding class years ago with Susan Mills. The cream one I made based on the green one, but simplifying the cover to use less paper. Personally, I prefer the green one. I've done other versions of this little book, including these:















Then, after the softcover variations, I moved on to hardcover. Basically, a hardcover pamphlet is a pamphlet-stitched bunch of pages in a case. It's simple to make, and will be a good way to move into sewn bindings.

In these, I had a little fun. I actually only included a plain cloth or paper cover in the tutorial, but I wanted to illustrate how easy it is to dress it up. I had a bunch of scrapbooking stickers lying around, so I used them on the covers of the cream and brown book and the little black one. I also used scrapbooking paper with writing and travel themes for the endpapers. The one with the fish is one I made in Susan Mills' class, where everyone in the class made a set of pages, and we exchanged them and each bound our own book. My pages had a coelacanth print in blue acrylic paint. I had a set of pages left over, so I cut out the fish and glued him on the cover. All of these books are for sale, incidentally, except the fish (and the green one in the second photo), so if you see something you want, let me know.

Finally, the tutorial I wrote today (which will be posted on Friday) has a variation of endpapers, and I showed them how to make a cover with cloth spine and corners and paper covers. I went with a monochrome colour scheme, which I really like (and I get to use coloured paper for the pages, which I love to do).

The brightness of the purple cloth and the darkness of the paper are exaggerated a bit due to shooting outside on a rainy day (that really does weird things to the intensity of colours), but it's not exaggerated as much as you might think. Anyway, I'm really pleased with this little book, and the ones in the last photo, so I think I may make more of them for my Etsy shop. They go together pretty quickly, but the rich materials make them look most delicious. I'd want to buy one, if I weren't the one making them.