365: Make a Book a Day: Book 322 - "Chinese Take-Out" - Coptic Bound Book/Jotter From a Recycled Chinese Food Container

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, January 8, 2012

Book 322 - "Chinese Take-Out" - Coptic Bound Book/Jotter From a Recycled Chinese Food Container

Guess what we had for dinner last night? The moo-shu pork was delicious! Luckily, there was some popcorn-type shrimp in one container that were mostly dry. When we finished, I realized that one take-out container was pretty clean. So... a book!

I cut the front and back from the container and glued them to a couple of pieces of heavy card stock to make them nice and stiff. I poked a couple of holes at the top of the front cover and put the wire handle from the container through them.

I folded white paper in half lengthwise, then cut the pages for the signatures to shape. They had to be a bit trapezoidal to fit the shape of the cover.

I stitched the sigs to the covers with a single-needle coptic stitch with red waxed linen thread. Done! Kinda yummy, I think.