Book 175 - Recycled Children's Book/Journal - Pooh

Here's another upcycled children's book as a blank journal. I love this little Pooh book, "Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition." As with yesterday's book, I carefully removed the book block and cut the book in half down the center of the spine. I was not able to save enough of the spine paper to fold over the edge, so I covered the edges with small strips of dark blue book cloth. I was able to keep the original Pooh board liners.

I cut beige text paper to size, stacked it up, drilled holes and stitched it with a loose stab sewn binding. Like with yesterday's book, this is not the perfect stitch for this kind of book. I discovered it works much better with a soft cover book that is also not this thick. The book does not open perfectly flat and the pages still tend to shift just a bit. It looks like I'll have to go back to a coptic binding for these recycled book covers journals.

Still, it's a cute book, a nice size and will make someone a nice journal.

Book 174-A Recycled Children's Book Journal-"Danger in the Desert"

Here's a new kind of recycled book projec for me, a children's book that is literally upcycled into a different book/journal.

For my faithful followers who have wondered where I was the last couple of days... I repeat. I AM NOT QUITTING. I have been working on books, I just could not post them for a couple of reasons. So today I'm posting the last two days and will post today's book later tonight.

Anyway, I've been wanting to do some of these journals using old recycled book covers for awhile. I finally got to the Salvation Army store in town and found a few kids books I think will be great. Here's the first.

I carefully cut out the book block and cut down the center of the spine to separate the cover boards. I left enough of the spine paper to fold over and glue down for a clean edge, then lined the inside with card stock. I cut the pages to fit, drilled holes through the whole thing and stitched it together with waxed jute cord in a double spiral (like a cross-stitch). This binding works better for thinner, softer books, I found. This book does open flat, but it's sometimes hard to get it to close perfectly. The pages tend to move out of alignment. But not too badly.

I do like this and plan to do more of these recycled covers with other stitching.

Book 139 - A Hot Pocket(s)Book - RecycledLoose Stab Sewn Hand-made Book

Why is it that even the one's you think will be dead easy give you trouble? I thought this little pocket book would be a walk. But one problem I've encountered in many of these "recycled packaging" books I've done is this: If you leave the cardboard alone, it's fine, but if you try to clean it up by lining it or sealing it, it warps to the point that it's almost impossible to get it flat again no matter how much weight you put on it and for how long. Guess I'm just going to have to let myself be satisfied with just the original packaging and not try to pretty it up.

Anyway... we sold the last Hot Pocket out of this box this morning. It was about to be ripped in half, flattened and put in the dumpster before I grabbed it out of Allen's hand at the last moment. I cut the name/logo part off two sides of the box, trimmed it neatly and lined it with red recycled paper. The pages are a bright yellow text paper with a bottom pocket folded up, then doubled over. The vertical fold is at the fore edge so there are pockets on both sides of each page.

The binding is a loose stab binding. As you can see in the photos, the stitching is a normal Japanese stab binding but without wrapping around the ends of the spine. And the stitches are quite loose. With this binding, while stitching you keep opening the book to check that the stitches are loose enough for the book to open completely and lie flat. I just read about this binding yesterday and wasn't sure it would work, but it does. The book opens totally flat. Interesting...