Extreme Papercrafting

This weekend, let's take a look at something completely different...a sort of walk down my memory lane of crafting.

I made reference in my last post to making over 100 ornaments a few years ago (four, I think). Anyway, these were miniature books because, for some crazy reason, I figured people would appreciate little, tiny Christmas books to hang on their trees, handmade by me, the Book Worm. These were actually a gigantic hit with my family, but I was crippled for months afterward with wrist pain and numbness in my hands.

Sometimes, extreme crafting is hazardous to your health.

I kept a sample of each ornament for my own tree. Some are, well, embarrassing. Others are pretty cool, like this one:



It was the most technical of all the books I made. I used different papers for the covers because what's the point of making them all the same? I loved the swirly green paper and the sparkly sheer ribbon, until I hung it on the green tree and it disappeared. The holly paper below shows up much better.


Inside, these are accordion folded with pockets holding little cards stamped with words like love, hope, manger, star, etc. The idea is to meditate on one word for each day of the 12 days of Christmas. I made these long before the scor-pal was available. They'd be easier now, but not by much.



Having to tie and untie the bow, however, is a pain in the tookus, so on the remote chance I ever do book ornaments again (on a much smaller scale, of course!) I will use other types of closures, like elastic loops.

Next are little stab-bound books for collecting each year's Christmas postage stamps. These use scraps of ultrasuede for the binding. The idea comes straight from a book on book binding. Ultrasuede is expensive, but a fabric company my MIL told me about sells bags of random small cut scraps for cheap. I had to match paper to the grab-bag fabric, so some were pretty funky colors for Christmas. I like this orange one, though.

I had a pretty big scrap of black ultrasuede, so I made about five or six like this gold and black one:


Here's the inside, so you can see the point of the book.

Can you believe that we used to pay just 34 cents to mail a first-class letter?

Book binding is fun, but it is much more technical and complicated to learn than card making. The stab binding above requires an awl (danger! danger!), and the gluing of paper on bookboards is tricky and messy. You have to align the grain in the matte board and papers and fabric to keep boards from warping, and everything is glued using PVA glue completely covering the paper, which curls awkwardly when wet. Mitered corners, end papers, needles, and lots of cutting...definitely not clean and simple.

If anyone is interested in giving book binding a try, let me know and I'll post titles of the books that helped me the most. It is both challenging and fun, and once you master the basic techniques, it's really not that hard...if you're a detail-oriented AR/OC type. *wink*

I'll post a couple more of these tomorrow, and then we'll resume CLEAN AND SIMPLE CARDS, because I have a few new cards to share that I hope you'll like!