Book parts

Made a book for my surface design class. We're suppose to fill it with pictures that inspire us artistically so that later we can refer back to it when choosing colors and techniques. Since I love making books, I hardly needed an excuse to make one!


For this book, I hand dyed my own book cloth. I dyed cotton a solid grey, over dyed it with red using block resists, and then over dyed that using potato dextrin to get those veiny black lines. I then ironed on some WonderUnder so that later the glue wouldn't seep through the cotton while I was attaching it to the book cover.

Then, I punched holes in my signatures with my awl.


It's good to have a nice, sharp awl so that the holes you punch are small. Otherwise you have these gaping holes that are very noticeable. And ugly! (Thanks, Alex, for this great awl!)

After punching holes into my signatures, I lined my cover boards with the book cloth and end paper. (Forgot to take a picture, sorry!) I was going to choose those wonderful illustrations seen in the first picture for my end papers. They're wonderful old chocolate company advertisements, but they were too big and I couldn't bring myself to cut them up! So instead I used indigo handmade paper from Cave Paper, which matched nicely with the cover and the antique white text block.

After placing the cover boards under the press for several hours, I punched aligning holes into the covers and then bound it all together using a simple chain stitch, so that the book would lie nice and flat when opened. Here's the finished product:

I immediately started filling it with pictures of gorgeous color combinations. Of course, the most beautiful ones can be found in nature, like in these butterflies. Pinks and blacks and blues and oranges. GORGEOUS!