Today I was determined to begin making progress on my book-making project, even if the only progress I made was learning what didn’t work.
Experiments in Book-making
I managed to find a couple of things that don’t work today, as well as make progress on assembling my sample book kit. I began by making six signatures (6 collections of 4 folded sheets that will be sewn together to create the body of the book).
Then I sewed the signatures together with linen thread.
I also played around with trimming a couple of my sample prints down to the size of the pages of the book and gluing them to the pages. The thin pages and/or the glue that I used created crinkling of the page that I would not want in a finished book. I will probably want a thicker page weight for my final book. And I will probably experiment with different kinds of glue as well.
And finally I clamped the pages together and glued the spine of the book.
Trial and Error
I also tried printing an image on photo paper that I carefully measured to fit in the sample book I’m working on. Though I calculated and re-calculated the position of the image on the page and entered what I thought were the correct margins in Adobe Photoshop, I missed the placement by a lot. I realized that trying to directly print the images on the pages of my book was not the best approach for me to use.
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.”
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At first I was discouraged with my lack of progress today. But when I stepped back and looked at it, I realized that I learned several things that I will take forward in this project. This is the creative process, two steps forward, one step back. Next steps for the sample book are to create the cover and put the whole book together. This looks like a fussy process so my results may not be pretty this first time out. But when I finish assembling the book I plan to play around with adding additional photos and text to this little sample book, just for practice.
I am enjoying this hands on fiddly process now that I’ve overcome my initial fear of making mistakes.
What projects are you working on just for fun?
May you walk in beauty.
This was the image I tried to place appropriately for inclusion in the sample book – a big fail!
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