Granny Book

A while ago, I mentioned that I had been commissioned to make a special journal for my client's grandmother, who's 88 years old. She wanted to give her grandmother a special journal for her birthday where she could write her memoirs. She wanted 26 pictures interspersed throughout the pages of the book to make it more personal. I absolutely loved the idea and quickly set to work, choosing the paper and color combinations for my client to choose from!
She chose a beautiful blue silk linen book cloth and Japanese screenprinted end paper with gold accents. I added a turquoise and navy silk ribbon for the bookmark, which really brought out the lighter tones of blue in the linen. Before covering the book board, I shaved three edges at a slant (all but the spine) to give the book a nice rounded feel when you held it. Seems like a bit over the top, but the difference (shaving vs. not shaving) is amazing! I also chose a bright yellow linen thread to bind the book with.

It matched beautifully with the blue linen and the gold in the end paper!
Unfortunately, after I was all done, I picked up the book and it was incredibly wobbly!! :( The yellow thread is unwaxed, which makes a HUGE difference when doing a coptic stitch binding (as I found out the hard way). It works well with full bound books (with a spine) because you glue the entire spine in place before putting the cover on. But when the thread is the only thing that is holding the book together, unwaxed thread does not work well. I had to undo the whole thing and bind it again. (bummer!) This time I opted for thicker ply, waxed linen thread in purple, a color also found in the endpaper.

The purple looked pretty as well and held the book nice and tight, which is most important!

For the pictures, Kurt was kind enough (thanks, Kurt!) to lay out the pictures and turn them all from black and white and color into sepia tones, which I thought would look very nice with the antique white pages. I took the file to a print shop to get professionally printed and then evenly distributed them among the signatures. We attempted to put them in chronological order, as best as we could, placing our favorite one on the first page. Isn't that a gorgeous picture!?

As a finishing touch, I gold stamped Grandma's name to the front of the book.
This is the final result!