Making Handmade Books

The video below showcases the fifth handmade book I've made for friends and family.

Reasons I enjoy doing this:

• Fun to pull poems together

• Practice of my watercolor skills (Each painting I did was done only once, mistakes or no. No redos.)

• Results in a unique and personalized gift for someone I love

Steps I took to make the book:

• Assemble poems, print them out

• Think of images to paint for some or all

• Decide on the order of poems (quotes, prose, memories) in book

• Cut pages to size I wanted so that they had sufficient margins

• Handwrite and paint the insides

• Make the cover from the hard board at the back of a drawing pad

• Find needles, ruler, waxed thread/floss and follow this SeaLemon youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04vt8YfT7XM

• Stitch according to the youtube video

Voila! You have a great gift and a chance to practice your skills in one tiny project. What I love about single stitch book binding is that the pages in this book - no matter HOW thick the art paper is - will lay flat so you can leave it open to a favorite set of pages.