Day 83 - A Tape-Bound Journal

This is a binding I'd never heard of until today when I noticed a very brief reference to it in Shereen LaPlante's book "Cover to Cover," which was the first book on making books I ever owned. She describes the process as using paper bookmaker's tape to tape one page to the next, then tape the next one to that, and so on until you have a block.

Well, not only do I not own any paper bookmaker's tape, I'm not even sure I know what it is. But then I remembered that I DO have some very pretty Japanese decorative masking tape I bought last year on etsy. So I hauled out that envelope and set to work.

This is basically a variation on a perfect binding, but with tape instead of glue. The taping can be a little tricky to keep all the pages perfectly lined up. Since the tape shows inside each pair of pages, I varied the color and design of the tape from page to page, then added decorative elements with the tape to the cover and another piece of tape over the spine. Throughout the process, I burnished the tape very well with a steel burnisher, so I do think it would hold together for quite a while.

. It looks a little like a Christmas package, but I like it.