I made a book! One of my mail art groups wants to have a journal swap so I made a journal. It’s full of mistakes but I’m good with it. I learned a ton. It was so fun to do; I see more journal making in my future.
I used Coptic Stitch Binding (I’m sure that doesn’t need to be capitalized but it somehow seemed appropriate). I learned about it in How To Make Books by Esther K. Smith. I used a cereal box for the covers and embroidery thread for the binding.
It also gets two pictures because it’s an awesome technique. It was the first time I tried it and it’s a little loosey goosey.
What’s that you say? Didn’t I just buy a binding machine? Why am I binding this by hand?
I got nothing. No brilliant reason. Leave me alone!
Sorry. I know you’re just looking out for me.
I used paper bags to make the pages. I used this technique to make them look cool. I also added some envelopes as pages. The idea of the swap is that everybody adds to the journal and then passes it on, so I wanted to make different options for people.
One of the cool things about this binding is that the book lies flat and I hope that will make it easier for people to add their art work. It’s a long term project but I will post some pictures of it here when I get it back.
nice job on that!
i’ve been interested in coptic binding for a really long time but have had no idea just where to start.