Good morning readers.

It’s the weekend and I have a clean desk. Yeah!

Today it looks like it will be mostly sunny and hot with occassional thunderstorms here in Va. Beach. Not good for the festivals but very good for my grass and flower beds.

Next weekend the 52nd Boardwalk Art Festival will be going on at the Va. Beach oceanfront. I’ll be teaching a class at Jerry’s on Sat. If anyone plans on taking the class and hasn’t signed up yet, please call the store and get your name on the list.

I will be dropping my submissions off at The Charles H. Taylor Art Center for the Tidewater Crafts Today art exhibition. One of the books I will be taking is an older full leather binding and this 1/4 leather binding that I made this week. The book is approx. 6″X8″ and 1.25″ thick. It has leather and hand marbled paper from France on the cover. The endsheets are of the same marbled paper used on the cover.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

A few days ago I had a photographer friend come over to take some photos for my  upcoming tutorial on flush mount albums. I needed some pages for the books insides so I setup and printed out some pages with some of my favorite flower photos. I really like the way the book turned out so I’m going to make a few changes and make some more copies.

Below are photos of the one made during the photo shoot. The cover is off white Duponi Silk. The photos are printed on Legion Photo Matte paper. The endsheets are made from a sandwich of Canson Mi Tientes and bristol board. The headbands are just a fold over of the same ribbon used for the closure ties.

The cover seems a little plain for me so I think for my next one I will make the cover in a natural linen with an inset photo on the cover.

    

Good afternoon readers.

Yesterdays demonstration at Jerry’s Artarama in Virginia Beach went well. A few readers showed up to say hi and take advantage of the discount on bookbinding supplies and paper. I also had a few folks sign up for the first class on April 1. If you’re local you can find out more about the classes I offer here.

Just thought I’d share with you a few old bindings I’ve done.First is a custom bound copy of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. The cover is a half-leather binding in green goatskin and hand marbled paper.

Next is the book I call my bible. It’s the first bound book I made and though it is a sad example of binding it holds information of immeasurable value to me. In it I have all my notes from any binding or paper arts classes I have taken or techniques I have tried as well as taped or glued in examples of headbands, stampings, leathers, etc.  You can see all the junk hanging out the top of it. For a few days I couldn’t find it and was beside myself as I needed to look up a technique I haven’t done in a while. I’m happy to report it has been located and is sitting next to me on the desk. The book is quarter bound in green pigskin suede and bark paper. I believe it was made in 1992. Surprisingly it has held up well.

Here is a book I made a while back. It was an old book on insects which I gutted and added a book block of heavy drawing paper. I added custom made bug endsheets and this sculpted face on the cover. I still need to do a little work on the cover as the face needs something surrounding it. Any suggestions?