May: Ephemera

May's intellectual collaboration project challenge was to create an artist book having to do with "ephemera." I've seen several at the Lilly Library that either stunned me or just made me wonder why anyone might want to collect such scraps and put them into books. When it comes down to it, ephemeral books reflect the life of the person who collected the fragments. So, I thought it would be appropriate to document my time at the Paper and Book Intensive in Saugatuck, Michigan with this sort of project. I chose to use the blizzard book structure, which I first saw…

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April: National Poetry Month

I'll continue to catch up on posting some earlier projects this month with one that occured in April. In honor of national poetry month, the Spring Leaf Press and Space Paste Press intellectual collaboration for April was a book of poetry. The binding could be traditional or creative but it had to center around poetry. Using the resource that is the Project Gutenberg, I chose to bind William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. These poems were originally illustrated by Blake, however, those original illustrations were left out of this book. This selection of poetry is comprised of two related…

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Stenciling and the Set of 6

I use stenciling as a (sometimes) quick method for decoration in various components of the binding design.  It is generally very successful and allows for clean design and a lot of control for the coloring method of your designs.  However, there are a few things that I have noticed when using stencils and most of these have occurred in one of my attempts at customized endpapers.  These end sheets are part of a set of 6 journals that I was commissioned to make. Every part was customized, starting with the end sheets. A few things that should be kept in…

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March: Stuff in a Box

March's collaborative project between myself and Kristin at Space Paste Press was a lighthearted, fun assignment. Time was an issue due to some traveling between the two of us but that only meant a shorter execution period. The theme: Stuff in a Box (or enclosure) Basically, any sort of book project we had in mind was fair game, so long as it ended up in a box or container. Immediately, my mind went to kits. I have a great interest in kits: a box or container that contains everything you need at a moment's notice...depending on the kit's intent. My…

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