Strange Journals
Ramblings on Bookbinding, Photography, Journaling and ArtReady for Casing
Over the past week I’ve been putting together all the ingredients for some small flat backs. The book blocks have been sew and glued up and I sliced up the paste paper I made a couple of weeks ago and used it to cover the cases that I’ll be putting the book blocks in. I’m going to add headbands to the book blocks but because these are meant to be lightweight journals I’m just going to use pre-made headbands that will just be glued in. Once that’s done, I’ll add the endpapers and then I’ll case the book blocks in. The photo below shows most of the finished parts before assembly.
Next Up… Flatbacks
I’ve got several sheets of paste paper and paper I’ve applied color to with acrylics sitting around and I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it. Making some flatbacks seemed like a good idea, the paper will be used on the covers. For those of you who may not know what a flatback is, jut think of a standard hard cover book. While I use wood, metal and polymer clay for most of the books I make but I do actually like this form and I make them all the time.
These will be about 5 1/2″ x 4″ and I’ve been assembling the book blocks over the past couple of days. The photograph below shows one of the signature in the piercing cradle. This get done very quickly because the layout is fairly simple.
Once they’re all pierced, the next step is to sew the signatures into book blocks. These are five signatures consisting of five sheets each. I’m using Wausau 57 Lb. Vellum Bristol and sewing them onto linen tapes — fairly “traditional”. Here you can see the final stages of a book block being sewn together.
It took me about three hours to pump out ten of them. Here are the book blocks awaiting glue up.
Finishing the Woodland Gnomes
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.
Next Up… Paste Paper
I’ve started sewing up the Woodland Gnome cahiers and they’re coming along nicely. In the meantime I’ve started working on something else, I haven’t decided what form it’s going to take yet but I’ve made some paste paper as a start. It has been a while since I’ve made some flatblacks and I’m leaning towards making some small ones for swapping at JournalFest.
Wrapping up the covers
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.
Getting Ahead of the Curve
JournalFest is coming up in October and after going through the confirmation materials, I’ve decide to make some things to trade. Normally, I end up scrambling at the last minute to get things together but this time I wanted to get ahead of the curve and get started. I attend PLAY regularly and normal make a small journal and a matching cahier, they’re always a hit so I’ve decided to make some of them JournalFest. I began by drawing out a Woodland Gnome for the cover and broke out my Gocco. I still have a cache of Gocco supplies and decided it would be the quickest way to get started. Here are a couple of shots of the covers in their first stages.
I began by laying down some blue ink to color the Gnome’s hat.
Once the blue ink was dry, I used a second screen to lay down some black ink.
The front of the covers completed.
The Book of Altaria
Not too long ago I heard a story on NPR about the ways in which science fiction has predictive of the future. One of the movies they talked about in the story was Forbidden Planet, a movie I hadn’t actually seen its entirety until recently. The story was the only excuse I needed to watch the movie again, it was also a way to honor Leslie Nielsen who died back in November.
A couple of days after the movie an idea for a new book started to form and after tinkering a bit with some polymer clay, The Book of Altaria was born. The book block consists of eight, three page signatures which are sewn to a leather spine with 4-ply waxed Irish linen. The image in the “view screen” is a picture of Anne Francis who played Altaria i the movie.
The book really isn’t a direct interpretation of anything that was in the movie but just another lamentation on decay and post apocalyptic artifacts.
Hipstamatic = iLomos
I have a confession to make — I like blurry photos. I’m not talking about poorly focused images but the kinds of images that take on a dreamlike quality because of motion, lens flare or a variety of other factors. I think that’s one of the reasons I like Lomography so much. Lomography, if you’re unfamiliar with it, began with the 35mm Lomo LC-A camera which was manufactured in St. Petersburg, Russia during the Soviet era. Because of shortcomings in the manufacturing process, each Lomo camera that was produced had slight defects in the lens resulting in blurry, sometimes dreamlike images. Today, Lomography generally refers to photographs taken not only with the Lomo LC-A, but other “toy” cameras like the Diana and Holga.
I went digital several years ago and while I still shoot film occasionally, I don’t own any of the cameras that fall under the Lomo umbrella. I’ve written before about creating Lomo like images digitally but those experiments have been post production, in other words I manipulate the photograph in Photoshop after I’ve taken it. Recently though, I’ve been experimenting with another more intuitive method for creating digital Lomos using my iPhone and an app called Hipstamatic. Available on Apple’s App Store, Hipstamatic essential gives your iPhone the ability to mimic several of the toy cameras used for Lomography.
Hipstamatic lets you switch between several types of film, lenses and flashes. While the app is ready to use immediately after download, you can add to your fun by purchasing additional “Hipstapacks” which add additional lenses, films and flashes to your camera. The app itself was $1.99 and each Hipstapack is .99 cents, a bargain if you want to experiment with Lomo style photography without sinking money in to cameras and film processing. Once you’ve taken photos with the Hipstamatic app, you can upload them to Facebook, Flickr or email them. You can also order prints from the Hipstamart Print Lab which will ship them to your door.
Here are a couple of examples of what the app can do, these were both taken in very low light. The first shot was taken with a simulated infra-red film while the second shot of a couple of computer monitors was taken with the Bettie lens, Pistil film and the Berrypop flash. No flas is actually involved, the app adds the effects digitally after you snap the shot. I’m going to be shooting some more with this app over the weekend so I can do a better assessment of how it will fit into my toolbox. If you’re interested, you can check out my Digital Lomography Photostream on Flickr.
Turquoise Box
I’m heading to the annual PLAY Retreat tomorrow. Tracy and Teesha Moore are always gracious hosts and since I know that Teesha likes little boxes, I decided to make her a gift before heading out. The small turquoise box pictured below was made from polymer clay. The lid is walnut burl and the interior of the box is lined with basswood that was faced with walnut veneer.
Small Jade Landscape Scrap Book
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.
