I dig through the pile of boards I bought over the summer and decided to put a fairly simple journal together. This journal is 4″ X 6″ and was bound using Bloodwood, leather and 140 Lb. Fabriano Artistico. The Bloodwood was simply sanded and finished with clear Deft Danish Oil. The book block is sewn on to the leather spine with 4-ply waxed linen thread. Not much else to say, just a simple journal.
While I like Moleskine cahiers and I have plenty of them laying around, I still like to go the do it yourself route sometimes. I’ll be making about 50 of them fairly soon and I’ve been doing some prototyping to decide on colors and that sort of thing. Here’s a picture of a couple that I’ve made, the one on the left is the newest one. It’s not laying as flat as I’d like simply because I didn’t have any 2-ply thread and I stitched it up with 4-ply.
The one on the right was made in 2009 and I used a Gocco to put the art on the cover. The interior is a Neenah 60 Lb text, the lines were done with a laser printer. The cover Royal Compliments 100Lb cover. These are the same size as Moleskine cahiers, 3 1/2″ X 5 1/2″.
The second book I made this weekend was about 5″ X 8″, about the dimensions of a Moleskine. The book block is 200 lb. Fabriano Artistico and is sewn onto a leather spine. The covers are made from mahogany and finished with milk paint. I cracked the paint by drying each coat in the sun and then putting on another coat quickly, before the first one was completely dry. I used several colors, layer after layer and the distressed the paint by sanding through some of the colors. I’m not sure where it came from, but I had a picture of the minions from the movie Despicable Me laying on my desk and it got included in the binding. Here are the images:
The front cover:
The detail on the spine:
Here’s a close up of the minions:
If you’re interested in trying milk paint for yourself, I get mine from The Old Fashion Milk Paint Company.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, without going into details some changes in my Clark Kent life took over. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things and while I was trying to decide what I wanted to make, I found some pages I had torn some time ago. I made a couple of books to fit the pages, the first is made from polymer clay. It’s approximately 4″ X 6″ and the book block is 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico sewn onto a leather spine. The front cover features five faces and below the faces, three cutouts reveal some brass screen sandwiched between the polymer clay layers.
Here’s a shot of the cover:
And the spine:
In the process of preparing to go to PLAY for a few days I’ve bound two books, the leather wrap and The Book of Jade Faces. I’ve very satisfied with the way they both turned out but something still wasn’t right, I needed more. I wanted something… a little… beefier? I rummaging through my supplies trying to get an idea of what I wanted and then I found a piece of walnut burl, the grain and striations in the wood were fantastic. I only had one piece of walnut but I was able to squeeze two 8 1/2″ X 5 1/2″ pieces out of it. To do that however, I had to cut it so the grain was running horizontally across the cover instead of from top to bottom. Visually I think it works, the burl hides the direction of the grain well and from structural standpoint this is a fairly hard wood so there shouldn’t be any problem with wear or breakage.
The beauty of the wood called for a very simple treatment so after easing the edges and slightly rounding the corners to avoid “pokeage” a couple of coats of Tung Oil were applied, followed by a couple of coats of Carnuba Wax. The book block is 300 gm (140 Lb.) Fabriano Artistico and sewn to a leather spine with waxed polyester thread using a modified long-stitch. As the stitches go down the spine they get progressively longer and a friend commented that it creates an illusion that each series of Xs is fatter than the one above. Here are the photos:
I put the last detail onto The Book of Jade Faces and as stood there looking at it there was a problem. Fabriano Artistico paper comes in 22″ X 30″ sheets and because of the size of these journals, when I tear the pages down from the sheet I’m left with a 3″ x 22″ strip of paper. Normally, I’d just toss them into my scrap bin and use them down the road but this time, the scraps lay there on the counter mocking me. What the scraps didn’t realize is the the polymer clay and all the tools were still out on the counter. They weren’t scraps for long.
This small pocket journal is 3″ X 3″. Both the front and back covers are made from polymer clay. The front cover is made from the faux jade that was used to make The Book of Jade Faces, I added some inlay just to make it a little more interesting. The inlay is gold polymer clay, the design in the inlay was created with a fairly standard mica shift technique. The back cover is the gold clay which I cut the inlay from. I’m not completely satisfied with the way it turned out and I’ll probably replace it, but it’s not bad for a few minutes work.
