Puget Sound Book Artists, of which I am a proud member, is having their second annual members' exhibit this summer at University of Puget Sound's Collins Memorial Library, and I somehow volunteered to make the guestbook for the exhibit. And so, with much trepidation, I did make the guestbook, and handed it over this afternoon. The anxiety was all self-inflicted and silly, really. I look at the vast talent of my fellow members and quake in my boots sometimes, but I am old enough to know there are occasions you just have to jump in and do it. So here is what I came up with. The soft cover book was bound using a variation of Crossed-Structure Binding, originally designed by Carmencho Arregui, a Spanish-born bookbinder who lives and works in Italy. I had wanted to try this style of binding the minute I first saw it, and I am happy with my first attempt. The cover paper is hand made from India, and the signatures are simply pages cut down from a sketchpad, then printed on my Epson printer. I tried and tried to determine if the cover paper had a definite grain, but if it did, it was not apparent to me, so I took a chance and cut the front and back covers so the printed designs were perpendicular to each other, just for contrast. Normally I would never do that, but this time I did not have issues with warping. The added rectangle with the beading was beaded first, then glued to the front cover.
Signature pages were cut to standard legal size- 8.5x14 inches- and I worked out the design for the lined pages on Photoshop, printing half of each sheet so each page was lined on one side and blank on the other. Binding thread was dark brown hemp, sewn with a doubled thread.
Next project: Clean the studio. Again.
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