Studio practice

 Finished 25 days mini book  

After doing the last practice in case binding I realised I still had to do more research into alternate methods of making the text block in order to create a usable sturdy book, where the pages wouldn't just fall out. I knew because of the small size I didn't want to sew the book pages so had to look for a different method. I just watched YouTube videos and tutorials about this till I found one I wanted to try. I've put in a photo below from my sketchbook where I go into more detail about the process, but the brief idea is that you cut grooves into the spine of the pages which you fill with glue and cotton, this acts like stitching without actually stitching. I repeated this method twice to make to separate text blocks and found it to be an easy way to make a usable page block both times.

For the covers I just followed the same case binding method I tried previously. For the cover fabric I decided to use two different colours, I chose the green colour id been practicing with as I feel it has that traditional hard cover look to it, then for the second book I chose a deep red. I thought this combination of the green and red would make a visual link back to the original painting I'm responding to. Attaching the text block to the cover was just as easy as the rest of the process, simply gluing the spine and end pages to the cover. Again I chose to letter stamp in the title on the cover but this time changing the name and also stamping it into the spine. I chose the title 25 days, I thought this to just be simple and correct. After stamping I gold leafed into the letters to make them more prominent, I do like this idea but would of liked it too of looked neater but the general opinion of others was it looked good. 

Overall I'm really pleased with how these little books turned out and enjoyed making them, I was really surprised that I was able to actually make a little hardcover book before looking into it online I didn't really think it was possible without being in like a book making place with machines. I believe the mini books to be an interesting way of presenting the images and showing the changes in movement, habits and progression through a short time period. Taking the  25 images and documenting the table daily was something I really enjoyed and wanted in this project so I'm glad I was able to do something further with the images. The choice to make these books so tiny is something that I think adds interest but I tried to avoid the overly novelty cute factor by keeping the book itself looking just like a regular generic hardback, just small. This choice to make the books so small is something that I think pairs well with the 25 images, the images themselves being a side task and the small camera they were taken on, it just feels right that the book itself it small. 

Finished book:

Text block process: