Book 236 - A Cased in Codex Blank Journal w/ Marbled Paper

Here's a "proper" book, a cased-in codex journal complete with headband.

But first, a technical update. I finally got the camera memory card worked out, but don't ask me how. I just kept fiddling with it, playing around with the camera's menu, putting the card in the computer's card reader to check, taking it out. Finally, it just worked. It sort of reminded me of the time I was a teenager making a dress I wanted to wear the next day when my sewing machine broke. I started taking it apart, took off the flywheel, took out a bunch of parts, dusted everything off, put it back together and it worked... and I still had three pieces in my hand. Hmmm....

Anyway, back at it. Today I have a very pretty hardcover journal. The covers and spine are made of Davey board and covered with a lovely blue/green/purple hand-marbled paper. The spine of the case is covered with royal purple bookcloth. The signatures are stitched with white waxed linen thread, then glued in the gluing press, then covered with mull, which was also glued down. The block was trimmed on the big cutter for a very clean edge. The headbands are black and white. After everything was done, I wrapped it all in waxed paper and put in the press for several hours to make it lie completely flat and neat.

The end papers are a heavy mottled green paper, Thai perhaps. Very nice.

This is a very clean, traditional cased-in codex blank journal that I'll be proud to offer for sale when this challenge is over.

Book 132 - Cased-In Codex Hand Made Hand Bound Journal

This is the first time in this challenge that I have made what non-book arts people would probably call a "real book" -- a traditional codex with a stitched and glued book block cased in. It was fun to do and I will do a lot more, but it's frustrating when you don't have all the right tools. Especially when you learned in a studio with ALL the toys. That would be my sister's. She has all the right presses and hand tools and a hydraulic cutter so the blocks come out perfectly trimmed.

Me? No stitching cradle. No book press. No gluing press. I've got some paper wrapped bricks and some heavy cardboard boxes of Arizona maps for weights. I didn't have any mull to glue onto the spine but I found some ribbon that worked.

I guess part of the "challenge" aspect of this whole thing is making it work when conditions are not optimal.

Anyway, I made the case for this book from davey board covered with some marbled paper I made in a workshop literally years ago. It's been sitting on a shelf ever since. The liners are some scrapbooking paper I bought a long time ago. The six signature are folded text paper sewn on tapes.

I think it's a pretty book and I want to make more, but first I'm going to pop over to the Talus website and place an order for better glue, thread and papers.