Surprise Session at the Austin Book workers

Last session we met we had a little surprise session - I went to a Dollar store, and bought decorations for about 12 Dollars. I got a bunch of napkins, a table cloth, plates, and similar items. Then I made 10 little bags with these, added pipe cleaners, scrap paper, threads and such, gave each bag a number. When we met, everyone was supposed to say a number - and got the appropriate bag.

Here are some examples of what we did that evening:

American Girls Library - feelings with a new cover

Just some fun project. I wanted to give this book about feelings and how to deal with them as a gift. I bought it on ebay, but did not like the book cover too much.

So I took the covers off, added endpapers and a new cover. I used some very thin cardstock with maps on it to have it look a bit like map to a pirate's hidden treasure. And to top it, I used a piece of darkly tanned leather to make the spine of the book.

The original binding was excellent, well bound books, very pleased with this.

Book binding

Just finished my first book where I used yarn to bind the pages together. That came out fine, although I could not find a description of how to do that best with 4 holes to bind. But that was what I prepared.... The manuals online are for 3 holes when just binding several pages to one fold, and 5 holes when getting several times several pages, and folders need to be bound together.

So, the binding came out fine, and after I got new paper to cover the cardboard, I measured, cut and glued. Should not be that difficult, but had to repeat a cut because it was crooked. Sigh.

And then I made a mistake and switched the gluing order.

I glued the book block into the binding first, and then folded the corners all around. Should have done the other way, now I have some not nice areas where I can see the paper cut. Well, I am still happy I finished my first 'sowed' book.

BTW, I don't really know what I should use this book for, so I just look at it from time to time ;-) It is small with ca. 3 by 5 inches, and it feels nice in my hands.

I am looking forward to the next meeting of the Austin Book Workers to see what other people did over the summer.