I had this big long entry written, and accidently deleted it…so here it goes again! I haven’t drawn much lately and I miss it. Tonight I tried drawing an idea I had for Illustration Friday and it was NOT working out, so I had to scrap it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since it’s been so many days since I even drew anything.
Anyway, today, I finished putting together a book I had started months ago. By started, I mean that I had the paper cut and the cover papers selected…Today I sewed the signatures together, glued the cover together and assembled it all. I love making books. It’s so fun to be able to make a book from just paper and mattboard and thread & glue. I am such a sucker for blank books, I have a few sitting on my shelf that haven’t ever been written in, yet. This book is 7 signatures of 3 pages each, sewn with Red string. (Red is all I had on hand at the moment). It is covered with patterned papers that I bought at a store. I attached a ribbon for a bookmark into the spine, which has beads dangling from the end of the ribbon. Inside the back cover I attached a pocket of coordinating paper to hold important papers & stuff.
I made a journal like this last year and used it for my daily art journal…it worked great. I loved the size. This book is 8.75 x 5.5 and I used a couple of different kinds of paper in it. One is a textured cream colored paper that resembles watercolor paper, but it’s like 70lb. The other paper is white sulphite drawing paper, 80lb.
I will probably give this as a gift, or keep it around to use as an example for my book arts class which I am teaching this winter. I think it would be fun to make journals and sell them…but I don’t know if anyone would buy them…I know some handmade journals are so expensive, you hate to write or draw anything in them. I am always nervous about starting out a new journal anyway…but it’s kind of exciting too. Anyway, I thought it would be really cool to add some handdrawn embellishments on random pages inside. Do you think people would like that? If I were to sell a journal like this, it would probably be around 20.00. Do you think anyone would buy them?
I don’t know if I will really sell them, just thinking about it. I just love to make them! But I’ve got to do something with them, ya know!