A row of labells for the books I make, when they sell.

I finished designing some labels to paste in the back of the books that will be going on sale shortly. The image is a cut down and slightly modified version of a 1568 etching. The credit goes to the renowned Jost Amman who designed the woodcut for the book ‘A True Description of All Trades‘, published in 1568. The woodcut shows the bookbinder at work. In the original book, the figure is accompanied by the text:

“In binding books I have some skill
In boards or vellum at your will,
Devout or worldly, large or small,
I fit with clasps and bind them all,
Oft-times also design to gild,
Thus keep I well my coffer filled.”

Well, I’m not sure about the full coffers. Maybe at some stage down the track. Either way, I think the labels look OK, so I’ll start attaching them to my books as they’re finished.

They’re printed using in pigment ink using a Canon Pro9500 on a paper of which I can’t quite remember the name… it’s mould-made Van Gelder Zonen laid, anyway, probably around 180gsm. I used my dodgey DIY ‘deckled-edge’ tearer to separate them. I tried a few variations… Hahnemuhle inkjet paper (the coating comes off too easily and it doesn’t tear well), coated canvas (too thick and too ‘clean’), plain catridge paper (too thin), etc.

A few other media that didn't make the grade.

The VGZ paper seems to come out the best. It has the right combination of bleed and sharpness; it doesnt look too ‘clean’, but at the same time it doesnt look like a crap inkjet print. It looks a little bit like a woodcut print I wonder what Jost would have thought…

Well, I really like the deckled edges you get on mould-made paper. Unfortunately, you lose it, of course, when you cut the sheets down for binding (or whatever other purpose you have for it!). I have previously just used ‘torn’ edges, but they’re not nearly as nice. I saw advertised recently a ‘decal edge tearer’, which

I considered buying one of these things in Australia, but I figure ~AU$80 is a bit steep for a bit of plastic with a crooked edge! There’s also a few other places that sell them, and a Google search will find even more, but the same thing there seems to cost around ~US$25 without postage.

Being a bit of a cheapskate somtimes, I figured I could make my own for next-to-nix. I had a go, half expecting that I’d just throw my attempt in the bin and fork out for one of the above mentioned products… but it worked pretty well actually!

My DIY 'deckled edge' tearer (the ruler) and the leather-working tool I used to make it.

I just took a standard 40cm plastic ruler and cut chunks out of it randomly with a leather tool that I have (an adjustable leather gouge/groover – it’s probably very blunt now). It works best if you cut grooves at quite a shallow angle so you get grooves across the face of the ruler, rather than just cuts into the edge of the ruler. I guess it gives some space so that the paper that’s being torn can delaminate and leave a partial-thickness behind in the groove. The ungrooved parts help maintain a straight line.

My parner and I are hopelessly sentimental (this is why our house will soon be stacked high with junk that we can’t bear to throw away because it has some kind of memory attached to it!). I think traditions go hand in hand with sentiment; Part of our sentimentality caused us to start a tradition for our first Christmas together (one year ago!) whereby we’d make a decoration for our tree each year. She makes pretty cool little figures from Fimo and other types of modelling clay… I tried, and soon found out that my talent for making that stuff reached it’s peak at, well, I think about age 6. My attempts at making things like that still look like they were done by a 6year old. Consequently, I ditched that idea this year, and decided to make a little christmas-themed book to hang on the tree, which was big enough for a small message each year.

Small leather tight-back for the christmas tree!

It’s a simple leather-bound, tight-back, blank journal about 6cm (~2.5″) square. It has 8 signatures of 4 sheets each (8 sides) made of my favourite paper for binding – 120gsm Zerkall laid paper. The cover is made of a small segment of christmas wrapping paper.

Maybe I’ll make some to sell next year… hopefully I’ll have more time for it than I do this time around!

A hand-sewn headband.

Here’s an article on something I’ve been searching for for some time now – hand-sewn headbands. I am yet to have a go at it, but I like the idea of doing the headband myself rather than just gluing on a strip of machine made stuff! Plus, the hand sewn bands look so much better, I think – They’re a lot thicker, and a lot less ‘fake’ looking! Anyway, thankfully,’Pied Crow Press‘ has written up a nice tutorial with lots of pics to show how it’s done.

The stack of chiyogami up for grabs from The Paper Place!

Here’s a great competition from the people over at The Paper Place. (If you don’t know them, go check out their site. They have a great range of stock). They’re offering a 8.5 x 11″ sample sheet of every paper pattern they stock. So that’s a nice stack of over 600 papers worth about $2300!

EDIT: Unfortunately, I didn’t win. Oh, well. It was worth a try! This person did win it though, so I hope they enjoy their big stack of papers!