I’m working on finishing up the Woodland Gnome cahiers I’ve been making for JournalFest. ONce the sewing is complete, all that remains is trimming them to width and rounding the corners. In the images below, you can see the final two steps of the process. In the first image, you can see a pile of Gnomes being trimmed to width. The second image is a completed Gnome with corners freshly rounded.
Tonight I wrapped up the printing for the covers of my Woodland Gnome Cahiers. I stopped at a Kelly Paper store on the way home and found a stock to use for the book block which gave me the information I needed to put the colophon together. I created another Gocco screen for it and knocked out the last of the printing on the covers.
Another small book created from the scrap bin. The dimensions are about 2″ X 5″. The book block consists of 6 signatures of 90 Lb. Fabriano Artistico sewn to a leather spine with 4-ply Irish Linen thread. The covers were made with polymer clay using faux jade and bone.
Like many others who keep an art journal, I tend to work in several at a time. One is usually a larger book I’ve bound, think of it as the mothership — it rarely leaves the house. Each year around this time I bind a new one to take me through the year,
I began by tearing down 10 sheets of Fabriano Artistico to for the book block, I didn’t want any waste so I quartered the sheets for a book block that measured 7 1/2″ X 11″. I wanted the cover to look like it had been made from some salvaged wood so I began by edge gluing some poplar to a strip of walnut to get the 7 1/2″ width I was going to need.
Once the glue was dry, I ripped the board down to 7 1/2″ and then cut it down into to 11″ pieces.
Because I wanted this to look like reclaimed wood id decided to use several coats of milk paint. Milk paint can provide a nice hard, smooth finish but you can manipulate it to look distressed by applying it too quickly which can cause it to crack. I started with a base coat of black and followed that up with a two coats of white.
My goal was to get some hairline cracking of the white paint to reveal the black underneath, there wasn’t as much cracking as I had hoped but it was good enough for what I had in mind. I sanded the white coat a little and then applied a mask to create some lettering under the final coat of paint.
Once the paint was dry I sanded it down until I cut through the layers of paint and looked well worn. I followed that up with a couple of coats of clear Danish Oil to protect the finish. Once the covers were done, I attached them to the book block to wrap it up. Here’s a shot of the finished book, 424.
In mid-November I wrote about the PLAY Retreat rolling around again and showed a prototype of the small journals I was planning on giving as gifts to the other attendees. In early December I actually hand bound 50 cahiers, I really didn’t think it was important enough to post about so I let it pass. Since then, I’ve exchange email with a couple of the people who normally attend and they asked about the small sketch books I make each year.
I just finished them up tonight and you can see a shot of them below as they wait to be signed and belly banded to the matching cahiers. The cover is French Paper Company’s 140 Lb. Kraft Muscletone. The book block is Wausau’s 57 Lb. Exact Vellum Bristol which is hand-sewn to the cover with 4-ply Irish Linen thread.
Here’s another small book created from paper scraps. The dimensions are 2 1/2″ X 4 1/4″, the book block is created from 90 Lb. Fabriano Artistico sewn to the leather cover with 4-ply Irish Linen. The mask on the from is molded from polymer clay. The closure was created by boring a recess into the back of the mask and inserting a neodymium magnet, a second magnet was glued into the leather to keep the book closed.
