A Book a Day? What's Up With That?


Hi, and welcome to this year-long project. So what's this all about and how did it happen, you might ask. In mid 2007, artist Noah Scalin decided to make a skull out of anything he could find, every day for a year. It stretched him in ways he never imagined, as an artist, a writer and a person. His experience turned into a blog that went viral, and then a book.

Others have picked up on the idea: 365 Hearts, 365 Masks, 365 Bears drawn on a cellphone, 365 paper napkin mustaches.
I wanted to play, too, and I chose books. I love books, I know a bit about making books (thanks to my talented book-maker sister, Marilyn Worrix), and they're broad enough in definition to give me a lot of creative leeway.

The whole point is not really the books. The idea is to stretch myself in many ways as an artist and a person, to set up a discipline, stick with it and see what that teaches me.

I hope you'll join with me and follow along on the journey chronicled here, and let me know what you think.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Book 222 -A Blank JOurnal with Wooden Covers and Leather Spine - Longstitch Binding

Scrounging around the studio, I found these pieces of birch plywood and decided they'd be great covers for a leather-spined blank journal. I sanded the edges smooth and slightly beveled the edges and rounded the fore edge corners. Then it was time to play with the surface.

First I watered down some mossy green acrylic paint and applied it with a piece of old T-shirt fabric, then rubbed most of it off. The color was OK but it needed some punch. So I mixed up some coppery-bronze Pearl-X powder with acrylic medium and sponged some of that on, wiping most of it off. It took more color than I expected, but that turned out to be OK. I could still see the grain, which I wanted, and the color was livelier.

For the spine, I glued on a piece of really nice green leather. I wrapped the book block in a piece of gorgeous green decorative paper with a fern pattern embedded in it. The pages are Arches Text Wove paper, hand torn to size. I stitched them through the leather spine with a longstitch binding with a diamond pattern in the center.

As a final touch, I epoxied a small door knocker-style embellishment at the front edge.

This is really a lovely journal. Since it opens flat, it would also be a great guest book.






1 comment:

  1. This one is just wonderful! I love the green leather spine... and the diamond stitching...and the fern inside paper...and the wood covers...and the door knocker! The whole thing made me smile. Nice! :):)

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