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 23, 2011

Day 54-A Perfect Victorian Lady

Here's another "perfect bound" book, which features all the pages lined up at the spine and glued with padding compound, the way a mass market paperback bock is bound.

For this one, I used a pretty scrapbooking paper for the cover and a piece of mat board for the back. The pages are text paper. A simple but pretty and handy notebook/notepad.



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9 comments:

  1. ValerieMarch 23, 2011 at 8:50 AM

    Found you via CRAFT
    Wow! these are fun. I like the hairy ones - I can see why you keep going back to them. And I like the ones where you really push the definition of book - my fave is the telephone book.

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  2. Cheryl AMarch 23, 2011 at 10:07 AM

    Ditto on finding you via CRAFT. I'm also a lover of bookmaking/binding and seeing your ambitious book a day for 365 days really inspires me!!! Thank you for a wonderful blog..congratulations on the creation of terrific books. I have been wintering in Sedona..heading back to the Midwest in a couple of weeks and I will use your blog as inspiration to pull out my papers and awl!! I am always soooo hesitant to try new bindings, but I need to push myself and I think your blog will be my encouragement. Thanks again and please share any helpful hints as you go along!

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  3. Auntie KarenMarch 23, 2011 at 10:12 AM

    Another Craft follower. I Love your project! Very inspiring.

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  4. DonnaMarch 23, 2011 at 10:37 AM

    Thanks, all, for the nice comments. I'm loving this challenge... even though some days it feels a little like housework, you know... you do it but it doesn't stay done. You just have to turn around and do it again the next day.

    I'm so pleased to think my blog might be an inspiration to others to try something similar.

    I haven't seen the post on CRAFT. Can someone please post a link. Thanks, Donna

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  5. Elizabeth PerryMarch 23, 2011 at 4:52 PM

    Hi.

    I also posted about your project on one of my blogs:

    http://www.elizabethperry.com/creating/2011/03/365-books.html

    Thanks again for all the inspiration.

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  6. Cheryl AMarch 23, 2011 at 6:44 PM

    http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/03/


    I just went there and it's about half way down the page, title is Make a Book a Day.

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  7. UnknownMarch 24, 2011 at 1:52 AM

    What a fantastic project!. Congratulations. I'd like to be able to do such a lovely stuff..

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  8. Steven Lougheed aka DangerPupMarch 26, 2011 at 4:58 PM

    Very nice - any tips on type/brand of padding compound you like the best?
    thanks

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  9. DonnaMarch 27, 2011 at 12:35 AM

    Steven - I'm using colorlok precision padding compound and I'm happy with it. The only other one I've ever used is one my sister had. Sorry I don't remember the name. It was pink (helpful, huh?) I know my sister sometimes now just uses PVA, fans the pages just a fraction while gluing to get the glue in good then adds a piece of very fine, translucent cotton over the spine. It makes it very strong. HTH.

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