Spanish Tiles

This is the second of two custom postcard books I've been working on (the first was Love Letters). This one is Spanish themed. Since I was unlikely to wander into Paper Umbrella and find the perfect map of Spain, we decided to go for a a design inspired by the beautiful tiles of the area. The cover has raised designs copied from a tile I really loved. (Oh Google Images, where would I be without you?) This also served a secondary purpose - I put more detail into than I have before so that I could see how much would come through, in preparation for the cover of The Tell-Tale Heart. And was pleasantly surprised by the result! The small lines came out very well. I think it looks great with the brads and buckle too.

The person this for also loves Gaudi's fantastic architecture (so do I!), and he used a lot of tile mosaics in his buildings. So when I stamped/painted the back paper with Spanish designs I did a bunch of different designs rather than a series of identical ones. The colours, of course, are taken from popular ones of the area. I like the contrast of the yellow and blue. I was originally going to make the postcard corners/pockets out of the same paper, but I just couldn't get the stamps to look right, and didn't like the end result of the yellow paper instead. The silk I used to sew down the pockets alternates between the blue, green, and red of the back cover to keep the colour scheme going inside. It looks much MUCH better this way, and I like the contrasting yellow and blue from the top when it's closed. I think it fits better with the idea behind it then if it had all been the stamped paper. It's got plenty going on, but it's not messy and confusing.

Postcard Guestbook

At last! The postcard wedding guestbook I've been working on for the last week and a half. It's huge! I knew it was going to be big, but when it's there in real life all put together it's really huge. It got a bit unwieldy with the size and lightness because of the windows. I think once it's full of postcards it will be great, just like the last postcard book I made. Anyway. Lovely and romantic, I hope she likes it!

Piano Hinges

Have you ever made a piano hinge book? They're very confusing. But they look pretty cool. Basically the very back of the signatures are slit, then the pieces are alternated forward and back and (traditionally) a skewer is fed through them to keep it in place. You can see this on the cover. The blue pieces are the cover, the orange in between is the signature behind it. It's extremely time consuming and difficult to get it to look tidy and bend properly.

This book was a custom order for a beach wedding. Luckily I had this terrific paper that matched her colour perfectly and has a gorgeous ripply water effect for the cover. The spine is made of watercolour paper with calligraphy of the couple's names in their second colour (orange).


Normally piano hinges have skewers to hold the whole thing together. Obviously this wouldn't work for a book that is actually meant to be used, not just displayed. So I used ribbon instead. I used a skewer to feed it through. I only had to restart once, which was an improvement from the first time I tried to do this!

The front cover has a window cut into it with calligraphy of the couple's name's and wedding date. When paper is wrapped around an inside window, of course, it doesn't quite cover the corners. So I added a band of the calligraphy paper. You might not be able to tell from the photo, but it's a little higher than the surrounding cover. The orange paper is attached under the cover, wraps around a small strip of binding board, and back under the cover. It was not nearly as difficult as I though it was going to be, and I think really makes the calligraphy stand out.

Hopefully this wasn't too confusing! Ask me if you want something clarified.

Artist Portfolio

These photos are of a custom piece that turned out very very well. It's a sort of monotone (silk, leather and brads are all in a very rich chocolate brown) steampunk book with a few extra features. The back page has leather loops that fit most small to medium size pencils/brushes, and there extra pockets and the front, and one at the back that fits more full size pages.

This has got me to thinking about my own portfolio, lost somewhere in planning stages. I'm not actually a bookbinder by trade or training, my BA is in visual arts, and more specifically oil painting. I've been wanting to make myself some sort of book that's really an easy to carry around portfolio. Oils are a bit of a pain in the ass to travel with so it would be watercolour and pen. It's going have a section for displaying the finished paintings, a large pocket to hold the new pages, a board with elastics or somesuch to act as an easel while I'm painting, and room for brushes and my mini travel paint set. And it's going to happen... sometime... soon.

Custom Books

I love making custom books! I like making custom anything, really. It's very cool to take someone else's idea and bring it to life.

This book features a linocute on the front of some gears. I don't usually put gears on things, even though I love stemapunk, because they just seem a bit silly on something that doesn't require anything machanical to fuction. However this turned out so so well that I'm really rethinking that whole idea. Seriously, it looks pretty freaking awesome, and I can always do it in different colours, or layer a few prints on top of each other, or anything else really, to get lots of different looks. I really like how it printed on the antiqued watercolour paper. The rough surface didn't make for a smooth impression, but I like it better that way. Works better with the overall look of an 'aged' book, which was why I choose to do a lino in the first place, they just always seem a bit older period. Well, they are, it's been a long time since printed things by hand was current. But it's just so much nicer. And while I'm at it, I want a letterpress for Christmas. Then I could make some awesome books!