Book layouts

In other exciting news, I finally got the paper for our own wedding book that I’m making.  Oh yeah, that’s right.  We MAY have gotten married just over a year ago.  It’s so sad that we are photographers and haven’t even done anything with our own pictures!  I just didn’t know what I wanted to do with them for the longest time.  Everything was too expensive and not special enough.  I’m kind of picky like that, although it’s a good thing when making book art because it HAS to be perfect.  When I thought I’d start offering handmade books for our clients, I realized, “Duh!”  I’ve been making them for a few years ever since I decided to combine everything I’d learned in that fibers class in my final project.  (As a side note, what kind of fibers class doesn’t teach you how to make handmade paper?  Maybe someday when I have more studio space, I can even make my own paper for the books!)  

So, since my teacher was not…teaching… I taught myself by reading lots of books and internet tutorials, and looking at lots of pictures.  It’s a great way to learn about something you are interested in.  Homeschool kids do it all the time.  I think the library may never get their bookmaking books back.  (Hah!  That was some sweet alliteration!)  I’ve been learning lots of different, cool binding techniques.  The best part is that you can make the cover look like anything you want.  For our book, I’ve got some duiponi silk in sunset colors (pink-orange, orange, yellow, red) and I’m trying to find just the right composition with the shapes and colors.  They’ll be layered like a sunset, maybe with some patches of white linen, and sewn together somehow…I was thinking maybe using thread in the same colors as each patch of fabric and showing the stitches on top along the edges.  On the inside, I want to have brightly colored vellum between signatures (the trick is trying to find vellum that is big enough in one of the right colors).  That’s about all I’ve got so far.  Stay tuned!