Day 16-Duffer's Guide

This book is an "almost cheat." I've made this book before, many times, and some of the elements of this one were already made. But since I actually put it together today, I'm calling it qualified.

This is actually my sister's design. Davey board bookboard is covered with a mustard yellow heavy decorative paper in a traditional, though very thin, book form. Inside, a single sheet of paper with computer generated text is printed with funny quotations about golf. The page is then accordion folded and glued into the book covers.

Some of the quotations are: "Golf is played by 20 million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun." ~Jim Bishop

"Golf is just a lot of walking broken by disappointment and bad arithmetic." ~Earl Wilson

"In retirement I go for a short swim at least once or twice every day. It's either that or buy a new golf ball." ~Gene Perret

Nice little book and very salable. I'll make a lot more of these.

Day 15-"Achoo!" - A Loose-Leaf Allergy Book

Since I've been not at my best all day from being stuffed up, I decided to use that for today's book. I'd just grabbed the box of allergy tablets and reached for a Kleenex when it all came together at once.

Although today's book is a pretty quick-and-dirty rendition of the idea, I do like this idea and want to try it again soon. I took the allergy box and cut an oval from the front, like the oval on the top of the tissue box. I gathered a dozen quotations about colds and allergies and printed them out, then cut them into small sheets about 2 1/2" square. I folded them in half, some with a mountain fold over the text, some with a valley fold there. Then I interleaved them like Kleenex in a box. The problem was to get them to stay put inside the allergy box, which was a lot bigger than the "pages." Looking around my desk area for a way to hold them in place, I spotted a little origami box, slightly bigger than a matchbox, that a friend had sent me a cabochon in. The pages fit in it perfectly. I taped it down inside the box under the oval slit, pulled the first one, the "title page" up through the slit, and there you have it.

A couple of the quotations inside:

"I used to wake up at 4 a.m. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness." ~James Thurber

"Asthma doesn't seem to bother me anymore, unless I'm around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar." ~Steve Allen


"Fall: it's the leaves, it's the mold, it's the pollen. Spring: it's the grass and the trees. Dust is bad in winter." ~Marjorie Crabtree

Enjoy...

Day 14-Bette Midler Accordion Book

I'm playing catch-up. While I was in Quartzsite, I had no internet access and when I got home last night I was exhausted. So over the next couple of  days, I'll be doubling up to stay on track.

Today's book is a small accordion book with one of my favorite quotations ever... truly wise words to live by. It's by Bette Midler and encapsulates her own uniqueness and creative spirit: "Stay true to the thing that makes you unique, 'cuz you're really a yawn if it goes."

The book measures 2 3/4" square. The board covers are covered with decorative paper. The text was computer generated. It was printed on beige text paper, then cut into strips, glued into one long strip and folded in an accordion fold. The text was then glued to the boards with a pair of ribbons caught beneath for tying the book shut.

Accordion books are always fun to make, not too hard and, I think, fun to read.

See you tomorrow.

Day 13-Gem Excess

As I've posted before, I'm currently in Tucson for the annual gem and jewelry shows. And I have to say I'm exhausted. I walked miles today just from tent to tent. And that was just two shows. There are over 40 going on all over town. I have seen entirely too many beads, rocks, slabs, precious gems, and sterling. It's all starting to run together.

The sheer volume of merchandise changing hands in Tucson this month is staggering. For something generally small and weighed in carats, the rocks here likely add up to several thousand tons. And there are even more beads--millions of beads in every size, shape and color, glass, silver, stone, porcelain. It's truly mind-boggling. And the finished jewelry--who knew there was so much of it in the world? To wander the aisles of these shows, you certainly wouldn't think there were any financial problems anywhere in the world, and certainly no poverty or hunger.

So today's book is meant to comment on that extreme excess. It's a stab bound book with a cover cut from a tote bag one of the companies was handing out today. It's like a woven papery cloth. The pages of the book are all full-color adds cut from the pages of the shows' guidebook. Dozens of pages of color pictures of beads, stones and jewelry. The binding is done with copper wire, the kind wire-wrap jewelry artists often use. After threading it through the holes punched in the pages and cover, I twisted it closed and coiled the ends up like a wire-wrap jewelry piece. Flipping through the dozens of pages of ads is an amazing look through the world of contemporary gems and jewelry.

Day 12-Rhodonite Bead Book

Well, I did warn you at the bgining that some of this year's worth of books might be,well, ephemeral. Here's one you'll never be able to pick up and read, write in, or put on a shelf. In fact, it's already gone. It doesn't exist anymore.

I spent the day wandering around a few giant bead and gem shows in Tucson. Overwhelming, really, and tomorrow will be more of the same. And I spent way too much money on beads. So what better than to make a book out of beads.

I took some rhodonite beads I bought today and laid them out on my black sweater to make the book front. The spine is made from four big rectangles of tiger eye plus a few small round tiger eye beads at the top. The "pages" showing at the top are made of rutilated quartz beads. The whole book is about 4" high x 3" wide. Enjoy the pix. The "book" is no more. One day it will be a necklace. Forgive the quality of the photos. Shooting in a hotel room by wall light is not the ideal conditions.

Day 11-Hairy Little Journal

I love to make these hairy little leather journals. I've done many of them--both because I like them and because... well, they sell, always an incentive.

This fat little journal is made with hair-on cowhide. The pages are hand-torn Arches Text Wove art paper. The book is stitched with waxed linen thread using the long stitch, which attaches the signatures directly through the leather of the spine. This kind of binding is great for a journal because the book opens flat, making it easy to write in.


The irregular raw edge of the leather skin was left intact for the front flap. It is closed with a piece of leather lace that wraps around a deer antler button. That keeps it securly closed and adds to the rustic look. The book measures approx. 4" x 5" and is 1" thick with 60 pages (120 counting both sides).

Since I'm in Tucson for the annual Gem/Mineral/Bead shows, this was a good book to make. I was able to bring everything with me in a small baggie--a piece of leather, pre-torn pages, x-acto knife, leather punch, needle and waxed linen thread. I bought the antler button and leather lace at the show today.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll do something quite different and more show related.

Day 10, February 2nd - Orange You Glad?

This one's a little silly, but it was fun. And it's almost all recycled. A green book.

I started with a small empty orange juice can I found in the kitchen. I cut the top off with one of those can openers that lifts the whole lid off with no sharp edge. I used some bright orange scrap paper, (a leftover Halloween party flyer) and cut 16 circles a little smaller than the inside diameter of the can. I folded the circles in half, then glued half of one circle to half of another, then added the next in  the same way until I had 8 circles glued together. I made two of these. Then I glued a longish piece of green embroidery floss into the last unglued circle half, forming the complete globe. The long green thread was anchored at the bottom of the can, threaded through the opening in the can top and then attached to a green embroidery floss pom-pom on the top.

The book is designed so that when you lift up on the pom-pom, it opens the can lid and pulls up the thread, bringing the two oranges with it, with their 8 "pages" each.

So, is this a book? Well, I said at the start I wanted to stretch the definition of a book. So yes, I think it is. It opens and closes, it has paper pages, and they are "bound" by the central thread. Yeah, it's a book.

The next few days will be challenging and I hope I can keep up. I am going out of town for four days, to Tucson to the Gem and Bead shows. I'll be in a hotel three nights and at the shows all day. I'm taking a very basic "book kit" with me: scissors, Xacto knife, a glue stick, tape, a few pieces of leather and some scrap paper, needles and thread, a little wire. If that's not enough, I'll have to try to make books out of what I can find in the hotel room or at the shows. I'm hoping my internet access will be sufficient to post here. Till then...

Day 9, February 1st - A Bass Journal

Fishermen like to brag... and keep count of what they got (or even the ones that got away, so they can lie about them).  They need a little journal to record their triumphs in.

So today I present a "Bass Journal" for recording those glorious moments. The idea for this little book was triggered by a pile of Arizona Game & Fish Dept. fish cut-outs we had sitting around. I used the bass tag as a template for the pages, which are printed in the same image but very washed out so they can be written on and still be readable. I also interspersed some of the original card stock tags throughout the book. The biggest challenge was cutting out the individual pages neatly so they lined up correctly. Die-cutter! Die-cutter!

Once all the pages were stacked, I punched holes through the mouth and strung them onto a copper wire "fishhook" to hang from. To use the book, just fan the pages out one at a time.

This book measures 8" long by 3 1/2" high, not counting the 2" long copper hook. Hope you enjoy it.

Day 8, January 30th - Wave Action Flip Book

Today's book is a little flip book. You probably all made at least one of these as kids. You draw or print a picture on the pages of a book, making it just slightly different on each page, then flip the pages to make the image appear to move. Actually, it's exactly what movies do--take thousands of still photos of action at a high rate of frames per second, then show them fast so the images blend into one another.

This book is called "Wave Action." It has approx. 60 pages, each with a wavy line. When you flip the pages, the line seems to undulate. I began by drawing a wavy line onto some card stock and cut it out. I then used that as a sort of template to draw the wavy line onto a page. Then I moved the template 1/16th" to the right to draw it on the next page. Then moved it to the right again for the next page and so on. I then took the whole stack of pages, in order, and used padding compound to glue the left edge to make it like a glued notepad. I made a cover out of tagboard and covered it with some decorative Japanese masking tape and glued the book block inside.

I wish I had video to show you the neat wave action when you flip the pages. I want to make more of these books, but with much more sophisticated drawings inside for more complex movement.

The book measures 3 1/4" x 2 1/2"x 3/8" thick.