Day 1, January 24th - Rosarita, The Beanie Book

Well, the adventure has  begun. One day in, one book done. Today, I set myself the challenge to make a book (or at least part of one) out of something free that I encountered in the first 15 minutes of my work day. I came into the store (we own a grocery store/convenience store/tourist shop) and saw that Allen (my partner) had just opened a case of Rosarita Refried Beans to put on the grocery shelves. The empty tagboard box they'd been in was sitting on the counter and I began to break it down for the trash.

And there it was... Book One, a simple Japanese stab-bound book made out of a Rosarita carton. I cut the ends off the box and used them as is. I cut the "Nutrition Facts" box off the back for the hinge pieces. I lined all the tagboard pieces with cardstock for extra body and used some decorative Japanese masking tape for the hinges. I tore 8 sheets of mottled text paper to make the pages and stitched the stab binding with red cotton embroidery floss.

Rosarita the Beanie book is basically identical front and back except for the tassel. She is 5 3/4" tall x 3 1/2" wide, a nice purse size. Below, you can see her open to page one. There are 24 text pages inside.

The whole book took about 40 minutes. It got me thinking that photographing, uploading, sizing and tweaking pix, writing blog posts, previewing, editing and posting them will take a lot more time that making the books themselves. But this blog is an important part of the process. Hopefully, it will gain a bit of an audience--you--and I really need you all to hold me accountable. So please do!