How to Make a Handmade Book

       In this photo is one of the handmade books I have in my show entitled Rock, Paper, Fire at the Jerome Coop.  Alas,  the show must come down this  Wednesday. It has been interesting to see how people react to these books I have created.

 I think the first thing  people notice is the outside cover. I like to pick a handmade paper with some sort of a design that sets the color theme.This paper came from England. I have a large flat file with  my large sheets of paper, and I am all about using what I have first. So I have my blue and brown and tan theme. Then I want to pick my inside sheets, which  here are a white shade. I add a " ghost page " to each of my signatures, and in all of my handmade books. This is a translucent piece of paper made from a natural source. Must give  credit to a fellow calligrapher, Joyce Bank on this style.

 These pages are then sewn together into a signature,  an even number of sheets, because  your stitches are down the center of the paper, which get folded over for your book pages. This is exactly what they do for any  book,where the binding covers the  stitches. In this book I leave the signatures, which I do sew together, showing out the back side, for decorative purposes. I always add beads and decorations to my books.  I like   each one I make  have its own "home" to live in. This  is a decorated  cigar box with a tarot theme. It  can be harder than making something from scratch, because you want to insure it closes properly. So, this is what I wanted to share with you today. Comments ?