Book 354 - Six Pack Series - Season Finale! - Stab Bound Journal/Blank Book

The finale in the proud line of 6-pack beer journals -- at least for now. I thought I was done with these until the delivery man came this week with another new brand--and I fell in love with the Pyramid Hefeweizen package.

This is a simple Japanese stab bound book. They're easy to make, fairly quick, not materials intensive. This one could be the guest book at a beer tasting party.

The front and back covers are lined with silver metallic card stock--nice and heavy--and the pages are peach-colored text-weight paper. For the side binding, I used narrow navy blue ribbon and sewed it with a criss-cross pattern.

OK, no more beer books for yet awhile.

Book 350-351 - Six Pack Series - Fourth Inning - Japanese Stab Bindings

More beer! More beer! More... oops, sorry, I got carried away for a minute.

But yeah, here are a couple more six-pack beauties.The Corona 6-pack is a little ordinary because the graphics aren't that great. But I really like the Fat Tire book.

In both of these blank books, I simply cut off the two large sides of the carton, and lined them with a very strong card stock. I creased the fold line for the front cover. I cut text paper pages to size and stacked the up. Clamped them between the front and back covers, poked holes through the whole sandwich.

I can make these Japanese Stab Bindings all day long and twice on Sunday. It's about the easiest sewn binding there is. And it always makes a nice book.

Book 344-346 - Six Pack Journals Series, - Third Inning - Cross Structure Bindings

Two more six-pack beer books (and a 12-pack).

The graphics on the Great White beer is so cool it really had to be included, snapping jaws and all. And the Mike's hard cranberry lemonade is a nice color. The Bud is just Bud (sort of like the beer itself). But that 12-pack gave me a couple of pieces large enough to make a notebook with a ribbon double spiral binding, so I went for it.

For the other two six-pack beer journals, I cut the sides from the six-packs and included part of the bottom of the box for the spine. That way, I could incorporate the fold line into the design of the book.

These are cross structure binding. I got the directions for this binding from Alisa Golden's book "Making Handmade Books." I've made a few of these now, and I still don't feel like I know how to do it RIGHT. They are just never as neat as I want. But these two are usable.

With a cross structure binding, you basically have two sets of interlocking "straps" coming from the two covers at the spine. You stitch the signatures over the straps of one side, then slide the straps of the other side into place. Then you fold them over and glue the straps to the insides of the covers. That's where I tend to fall down. I find it really hard to get everything perfectly aligned for gluing and then the final book is off. You can just see the straps glued into place in the last photo.

Anyway, here they are, three more books done.

Book 341-342 - Six Pack Series - Inning Two - Recycled Beer Packaging Books - Coptic Bindings

Inning 2 in our game of recycled six-pack container books. Today's inning features two blank journals bound with the single-needle coptic stitch binding.

The Alaskan Amber journal was actually the first beer six-pack book I made. I loved the ship graphic (an ice cutter, I assume) and the bright red background. I cut the largest part of the six-pack, the front and back panels, trimmed them and then backed them with some gold metallic textured cardstock with a nice weight. That makes the cardboard stiff enough to bind well.

The Budweisser six-pack is a lot more familiar to most people. Bud is one of our best sellers (and this one is a slight cheat since it's from a 12-pack, not a six). I lined the trimmed cardboard with more of the heavy metallic-finish card stock, in silver.

The pages for both books are a camel-colored text weight paper folded into signatures. I bound the Alaskan Amber book with red waxed cotton thread. For the Bud journal, I used doubled thread, one strand of red and one of black.

Nifty little journals. And two more down.

Books 337-339 - Six Pack Series - First Inning - "Blue Moon"

Beer books! Or at least, beer (and other) six-pack books. More of my infamous recycled packaging.

We recently started selling beer in our store. One day, while taking bottles out of six packs to put in the color for individual sale, I noticed how many of the six pack holders had really cool graphics. And in the final sprint to get the last of my 365 books finished and posted, I needed ideas quick. So I started cutting.

This is the first posting in a series of books with various types of bindings I've been making the last couple of weeks--all from six pack containers (well, one is from a 12-pack, but who's quibbling?).

Today's entries are all from a single six-pack of Blue Moon beer, a Belgian White Wheat Ale.

The first book used the large flat front and back of the six-pack. It's a blank journal bound with a single needle coptic stitch. I backed the covers with blue metallic-finish textured card stock. For the stitching, I used a double strand of waxed cotton threads in two shades of blue for extra interest at the spine.

The second book, a mini-jotter notebook, is the same structure as the first but much smaller. It's made from the two small panels that come together at the side of the six pack. It is stitched with dark blue waxed cotton thread in a single-needle coptic binding.

Finally, I used the two small panels from the other side of the six pack to make a French door book. It's actually two small coptic-bound books stitch to a single back made of chip board and lined with metallic card stock. The "French door" opens to reveal two little notebooks side by side, opening in opposite directions, one stitched on the left, the other on the right. Hard to explain, easy to see in the photos. The book closes at the front with a chain-stitch cord that wraps around a square opalescent bead.

This series makes me think of Victor Hugo. Whenever he started writing a new book, he always bought a new bottle of ink. When he finished writing "Les Miserables," the bottle of ink he'd bought at the beginning was empty. He told his wife he should name the book, "What There is in a Bottle of Ink."

So I guess today's post is "What There is in a Six-Pack of Beer."