Book 165 - A Harley Slotted Spine Journal - Handmade Blank Book

Here's another attempt at the slotted spine book. I obviously need more practice on this handmade book structure. I still have trouble getting the stitches evenly spaced on the spine and keeping the tension right. This is not awful; it's just not as clean as I'd like.

Sometime late last January or February, I was in the bookstore and noticed that all the 2011 calendars were marked down 75-80%. I grabbed a bunch of those 365 day desk calendars with cool pix on them. I'm not sure exactly what I had in mind at the time, probably the idea of using the images to make greeting cards to sell on etsy, which I might still do. Anyway, yesterday was organize-the-studio day, and I found the pile of them. One was a Harley Davidson motorcycle calendar and this book cover comes from the box the calendar came in. I reinforced it with some black cardstock on the inside and covered and strengthened the spine with black duct tape. For the back, I cut a piece of an Arizona map showing part of Route 66.

The slits in the spine were a bit difficult to cut because of the stickiness of the tape. That made them not super neat. The six signatures are made from orange and white text paper and are stitched with white waxed linen thread.

This wouldn't make a great pocket or purse journal because of the front Harley logo extension. More of a desk book, I guess. But cute.