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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

If I were a worm....

...I would be a bookworm. I love libraries, book stores, the smell of leather books, I love to handle them and read them, alter them and write/draw/paint in them! Which brings me to the subject of book making. I have always been interested in making books and polymer clay lends itself well to this craft: the covers are easy and so much fun to invent. I made a lot of books: all clay books, box books (or book boxes, I don't know which), books from notepads, accordion books, whatever I could think of. About two years ago I decided I wanted to make a real book from scratch with paper pages inside. Said to myself: "Easy kn easy"(sp?)... NOT... I didn't have a clue. So, when we went to Tremblant (which is our yearly gathering of friends who play with clay for one whole week), Krista was making books; I watched her from the corner of my eye and thought that I could repeat what she was doing, no problem. So during that week I made two covers...nooo they weren't going to be the conventional covers; I wanted something different. That year, we also experimented with extruders as you can see.



Got home, took the needle and thread out and started sewing. Got me a book! But it was wobbly and the spine looked like a bunch of noodles all scrunched up. Oh boy! To hide the spine, I used fibers and beads and whatever was handy. Looked OK but was still loosey goosey.



I was determined that next time in Tremblant I would make a real conventional book. I did my homework by looking around on the net and learned a lot about Coptic stitching. So last fall, Krista gave me the little extra push I needed to complete my first book (see the first picture on this blog). I have been making them like crazy and now I know a little of the craft - still have much stuff to learn though. I'll be teaching a class on assembling a book at Morrisburg. Oh and yes, what joy it is to hold a book you made from scratch and sketch, doodle, paint and write in it!!!



The inside back cover of my first wobbly book was made using a modified transfer: a young girl's head in an old lady's body. I guess that describes moi. he he

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Vio, I'm so glad you're going to teach bookmaking at Morrisburg. You'll be perfect for getting people not to get all anal and overly fussy with their books. I find that much of the instructional literature scares me because it can get so technical and I'm afraid to try and "fail". I say what the heck, and make a book that embraces the fact that it is obviously hand made. It has so much more character than one that is so perfect one would think it's made at a factory.

Krista

Sandy said...

There's nothing listed on the class schedule for you teaching - is this a pleasant surprise?

Now even more to look forward to!

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