Cherries! one last entry to avoid if you want to be surprised …
I’ve made the smaller mini-journal which I mentioned yesterday. It’s 1″ by 1″ (the minimum size for the swap), with 5 2-sheet signatures.
Another small journal, this time for the swap-bot “The Coptic Stitch” group “Size Challenge #1″ swap. The journals must be no bigger than 3″ in either direction. This one is 3″ by 2.3″. I’m going to make a much smaller one for my partner, but that will be too small to be usable, so I thought it would be nice to make her one that is only just inside the size limit too.
This book has 5 signatures, each 5 sheets of 90gsm paper. The cover is a Japanese paper called Ukigumo, which is waterproof and can be heat-fused to the background surface. The spine is Tyvek lined with mull fabric. The sewing thread is Gutermanns Sulky Cotton 12. The inside papers for the covers were cut from a Rococo chocolate bar wrapper.
Well, I did almost finish this yesterday, but the last stage was the Coptic binding, and I decided I needed to wait for the glue smell from the covers to go away before I tackled that.
This journal is for a Colour Challenge swap in the swap-bot Coptic Stitch group (which covers all handbinding of books, not just Coptic stitch). This time, the colour is red, so this journal has my favourite red ginburi momigami paper on the cover (very textured, with flecks of gold and silver foil), red lokta paper for the inner cover and red 18/3 linen for sewing.
The cover boards are covered with white Tyvek, which gives slight texture and sheen as well as being durable, with 3 colours of the ginburi momigami paper. The journal has 9 signatures, each with 4 sheets of 130gsm A4 short-grain book paper, and the whole book is 6″ by 8.5″ by about 0.8″.
It will be up to the new owner to decide which is the front and which is the back, but I prefer it as in the first picture. You can click on the pictures for bigger images which show the textures better.
Before I get on to what I am doing today, I want to mention that a friend from Swap-bot, lisajhoney, is doing a blog giveaway. She makes wonderful felt food and other felt items. The giveaway runs till September 2nd, but if you are reading this too late, please visit her blog and Etsy shop anyway.
So, back to me … today I am making mini-book charms for a series of charm swaps on Swap-bot. I made the first one a few weeks ago using traditional sewn signatures (groups of folded pages), but cutting the pages accurately enough for such a small book is a slow process, so now I am experimenting with mini accordion books. If this works out, I’ll post pictures soon.