Sweetie and I celebrated our first anniversary by taking a class together: we made books! I contracted with my handmade-book-artist friend Tree to have a custom class where we could stitch together our own creations.
I chose an
Anne Geddes poster to use as the front and back covers. The finished book size is 8-1/2" wide by 6" tall.
The bookmaking class was spread over two evenings. The first evening we decided on sizes, cut our covers (cardboard) and glued the coverings on them (the photo above is the inside of the back cover). We also assembled all the pages, which were hand-torn from larger sheets of paper.
The second evening (after the covers had fully dried) involved punching holes in the covers and the signatures (what you call a grouping of pages, all folded together along the spine) and sewing everything together.
Oh, my camera does nice close-ups, doesn't it? The stitching was fun and relaxing: we had time to chat and sip our tea as we worked. I only had to undo things twice. And the finished product is a lovely, blank journal.
I looked online for directions to bind your own book, but I'm not sure I'd recommend trying anything without hands-on instruction. Tree is a fabulous, patient teacher, and comes with all sorts of supplies and equipment that I wouldn't want to have to purchase (two kinds of awls, a set of curved needles, bone folders, and glues for every possible purpose).
And I would show a picture of Sweetie's book, but she already shipped it off to her best friend as a birthday present. Easy come, easy go.
Isn't the second anniversary supposed to be about leather? Wonder what we'll do for that...
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