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.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Book 165 - A Harley Slotted Spine Journal - Handmade Blank Book

Here's another attempt at the slotted spine book. I obviously need more practice on this handmade book structure. I still have trouble getting the stitches evenly spaced on the spine and keeping the tension right. This is not awful; it's just not as clean as I'd like.

Sometime late last January or February, I was in the bookstore and noticed that all the 2011 calendars were marked down 75-80%. I grabbed a bunch of those 365 day desk calendars with cool pix on them. I'm not sure exactly what I had in mind at the time, probably the idea of using the images to make greeting cards to sell on etsy, which I might still do. Anyway, yesterday was organize-the-studio day, and I found the pile of them. One was a Harley Davidson motorcycle calendar and this book cover comes from the box the calendar came in. I reinforced it with some black cardstock on the inside and covered and strengthened the spine with black duct tape. For the back, I cut a piece of an Arizona map showing part of Route 66.

The slits in the spine were a bit difficult to cut because of the stickiness of the tape. That made them not super neat. The six signatures are made from orange and white text paper and are stitched with white waxed linen thread.

This wouldn't make a great pocket or purse journal because of the front Harley logo extension. More of a desk book, I guess. But cute.





2 comments:

  1. You do push me to google and search for instructions as to the types of bindings you are doing. ;)

    This is another really clever little book.

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  2. Great idea. Ah, the purchase of materials *just in case.* I love that you actually do get around to using them.

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