Making Book

I’m a novice bookbinder. Not quite a complete beginner, but still green enough that I need checklists and to look up how to tie a weaver’s knot to refresh my memory. As with any endeavor, when you’re a novice, all bets are off. It might turn out… it might not… it’s a bit of a (looks around) gamble. (Get it? “Making book” — I’m terrible at puns.)

In other words, I’m enough of a beginner that I don’t know what I don’t know, so any project like this requires a bit of a leap of faith. That I’ll be able to figure it out in a way that gets me from point A to point B. Won’t be perfect, but hopefully it will be workable.

I have the opportunity to take an online sketching workshop presented by an artist whose work I enjoy: Dina Brodsky (IG: @dinabrodsky), and her sketchbook is handmade by an artist in Great Britain, Will J. Bailey. Not gonna lie, it’s a beautiful book made with some really nice watercolor paper.

I went looking to learn more about it, and WOW… gorgeous. At some point I would like to be worthy of such a book. Right now it’s too intimidating (and too big for my comfort), but maybe someday… As it turns out, Mr. Bailey has a couple of YouTube videos explaining his process (including why he started making sketchbooks). The first one can be found here: https://youtu.be/tjyQ7ZErlY8.

This is exactly my cuppa, friends: Homemade books you can (water)color in.

I’ve been making pamphlet stitched inserts for my (me-made, Travelers-style) nature journal using a box of 90lb, 9″ x 12″ sheets of watercolor paper. It’s good for being outside when you’re not planning on making a work of art, just spending some time seeing and recording. (This incomplete page from a trip to the local arboretum. I spent my time with a red oak, which apparently likes to grow in and around lodgepole pines. The tree’s habit is very much not “oak-y,” but its leaves are an immediate giveaway.)

Really nice watercolor paper is not inexpensive, and it would be a shame to waste any of it on a learning project, particularly when I have a stash of paper that will a) help me get started, and b) still be useful to me in some capacity.

So I am spending some time learning how to bind a sketchbook using this less expensive paper. When my skills are a little more reliable, and my sketchbook habits and skills are strong enough to warrant, I’ll graduate to the prettier, more robust paper. In the meantime, I’ll be making my own journals… and probably some gifts (warning: if you know me, you may be gifted a handmade book or two).

Here’s a text block, using the cheaper paper, but still sewn on tapes and glued. I have a small press, but I chose to use pressing boards to let the spine cure.

This one turned out pretty well, for a first effort, but it’s not square, so instead of case binding it, I glued some cheap chipboard to the first and last pages to stabilize it.

And then I used a paper bag to fold a cover for it. (Rüt is a vegan restaurant in our neighborhood. We like their food, and had it for dinner last night.)