What to do with handmade books?

Lesley asked what I do with my handmade books.

Well …

I started my book making career because I had a lot of bright green paper and a lot of images I wanted to store. I was keeping the images in scrapbooks but I could never find what I was looking for, so I wanted to sort them by subject.

So I made little pamphlet stitch books to glue the images in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then I got interested in making books for their own sake, which led to books about making books.

 

 

 

 

 

The cover of this one was discharged with bleach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I put stitch samples in some – these are from an on-line class with Sharon Boggon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then they began to get a little more complicated. This one is for holiday mementoes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and this one is  complete in itself.

 

 

 

 

 

Some are waiting for their purpose to reveal itself – perhaps a history of Doc Martens?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These little books made from scraps are very useful for making notes and W and I always carry one.

I do give some away – in fact it can be difficult for visitors to leave the house without having one of these pressed into their hand.

Most end up holding printouts, tear sheets, notes, doodles, etc. Many do, as Lesley says, sit on the shelf to be enjoyed.

Bet she’s sorry she asked!

 

Most of my C&G samples were too big to go in a handmade book. this one was so big it had to be folded to go in a page protector, but I couldn’t bear to cut it down – which is why it has creases in it. It is sun-printing on previously hand-dyed fabric, using real leaves as masks. then it was quilted with embroidery stitches a la Nikki Tinkler.

P.S. The times are in, and Mr Cheese Minor completed the 10k run in just under an hour, while Mrs. CM took, to her disappointment, just over. I think they both did brilliantly – I couldn’t walk 10k, never mind run it.