A Book a Day? What's Up With That?


Hi, and welcome to this year-long project. So what's this all about and how did it happen, you might ask. In mid 2007, artist Noah Scalin decided to make a skull out of anything he could find, every day for a year. It stretched him in ways he never imagined, as an artist, a writer and a person. His experience turned into a blog that went viral, and then a book.

Others have picked up on the idea: 365 Hearts, 365 Masks, 365 Bears drawn on a cellphone, 365 paper napkin mustaches.
I wanted to play, too, and I chose books. I love books, I know a bit about making books (thanks to my talented book-maker sister, Marilyn Worrix), and they're broad enough in definition to give me a lot of creative leeway.

The whole point is not really the books. The idea is to stretch myself in many ways as an artist and a person, to set up a discipline, stick with it and see what that teaches me.

I hope you'll join with me and follow along on the journey chronicled here, and let me know what you think.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Day 41-Welcome to Arizona-Perfect Binding

Today's book is a Perfect Bound book. A "perfect binding" is what you're used to seeing in any magazine with a flat spine and in most paperback books. Instead of the pages being folded over and sewn, the individual pages are cut and stacked and the spine edge is glued several times with strong glue. Then the cover and/or spine is added over the glued edge. The book opens flat and none of the page is lost in the spine, as you can see in the 3rd and 4th pix below (random pages from the opened book). But it is not nearly as strong as a stitched book--as you know if you've ever had a paperback fall apart in your hands.

The materials for this book were easy to come by. We have an official Arizona Tourist Information Center in our store, full of brochures, maps and other info. I went through the rack and picked out a selection of 4"x9" rack cards from places all over Arizona, mostly in the north, where I am. Then I just used those for my pages, designed a cover in PhotoShop & PageMaker, printed it out on good heavy glossy photo paper and glued it all together. Then I covered the raw glued edge with some Japanese decorative masking tape to pretty it up.

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