Much of a muchness

Things that make you go 'hmm'…

Cutting corners…

I was interested to find that you can buy ready made text blocks that just need ‘casing in’ and thought I would give it a go. It does make the whole process easier but I have to say that I’m disappointed with the result. The finished book looks a bit bland because the cover lining paper is plain cream so you don’t get the colourful ‘zing’ from a choice of nicely contrasting papers. The book cloth spine and the cover papers make opportunities for contrast, I suppose. It’s a nice enough book but not an experiment I shall be repeating. The text blocks are available as address books and album inserts and I think as diaries, so it would be useful in these instances but on the whole I prefer the handmade look of books I have sewn by hand and I also get much more satisfaction doing it ‘properly’. This felt like cheating!

stripes.jpgstripes_closed.jpgstripes_inside.jpgstripes_block1.jpg

4 responses to “Cutting corners…

  1. laketrees September 15, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    it looks impressive to me Diane…..love the stripes…the paper looks like seer sucker fabric in the photos…..very effective with the red….

  2. Diane September 15, 2007 at 5:18 pm

    I suppose I can still be creative with the covers – even if the inside is a bit of a cheat! Some folks might prefer the machine made innards to my home made efforts!

  3. suburose September 18, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    it looks great! but i do understand the hesitation.

    to me, it’s almost like cheating. the beauty of making books is making the entire book. not just gluing the text block in…

    great color choices though. :-)

  4. Diane September 18, 2007 at 9:23 pm

    Thanks! I’m glad you agree. You can’t really call it a ‘handmade book’ if a machine has made half of it either! It’s actually a ‘handmade cover’!

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