Daily lettering on journal page
Another go at the Anais Nin letter to Henry Miller
Same quote, same basic layout as last week: all-over texture, no guidelines, fairly large lettering (for me, at least) … except that I used a Speedball Flicker B5 nib, and included a little bit of watercolor painting. Once time I picked up the #3 Mitchell nib (from last week) by accident, and wrote one word before I realized my mistake. Since the word was “alone” it seem appropriate to leave it … um … alone. (Sorry.)
The paper drill
I’m having a great time teaching this 8-week manuscript book class here in Bozeman. Everyone in the class is doing such interesting work!
The last time we met I demonstrated the use of a paper drill and a Japanese paper punch in making a four-hole Japanese binding. Although the Japanese paper punch makes wonderfully clean holes, I thought that one student’s book would be too thick for the Japanese paper punch.
So I brought my Fiskars paper drill. I hadn’t used it in a good while, and I had forgotten how wonderfully efficient and easy-to-use it is — so easy, I accidentally drilled through something I shouldn’t have. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
To prepare for the class meeting, I made a quick-and-dirty model using some Strathmore Drawing 300 paper and covering boards with one of the fabrics I had backed with kozo in an earlier class meeting. I drilled the holes with my paper drill in class, but afterwards, when I tried to sew it, I discovered that the holes were too small. I didn’t have any students handy to hold the book in place while I drilled bigger holes, so I lined up the holes with large-head pins, clamped it to my workmate, and went to work. And then finished up with the sewing. Note to self: even if you don’t measure and place the four holes precisely, the two corner holes should be carefully placed so that the sewing around and spine and head/tail makes a square.
A circular accordion book
Towards the end of March, I made this circular accordion book as a gift for a friend. It’s a springy structure, so my three brass monkeys are sitting on the book to keep it closed. The book goes in the wrapper, shown upstage. I wrote one quotation out one side of the accordion, and balanced the message of that text with a poem on the reverse side, so that it functions rather like a dos-a-dos book.
Blizzard bookbinding fun
At this month’s meeting of the Bridger Mountain Scribes, I taught the group a folded blizzard book structure … having learned it earlier that day from this YouTube tutorial by Paper Kawaii. She makes it all look so easy!
So that we could get down to folding right away, I brought pre-cut pages and covers, plus ribbon and brads (available in craft stores thanks to the popularity of scrapbooking).
It’s a fun structure that I’ve considered for other purposes because of its potential modularity: rather than making 3 accordion sections, each folded spine piece could hold a single sheet folded once, and these could be replaced as needed.
One of these books was folded from scrapbook paper stock, and the other from Arches Text Wove (painted for the spine, plain for the text accordions).
Later, I had a good time folding envelopes and other structures from Paper Kawaii’s other YouTube videos.
Daily lettering
Back to my standard practice pages, which someday I’ll bind into journals. I used a water brush to help keep the palette and the brush clean. It’s handy.
