Lotus Blossom Journal Originally uploaded by MissRuth I’m proud of this latest hardcover book – it showcases some of my favorite papers and book cloth. The book was completely made by me from start to finish – I hand cut, folded and sewed the pages together, and created the cover out of beautiful hand-stenciled japanese […]
This spring someone gave me a book of leather samples – I’m not sure where they are from, maybe an upholsterer – but they came in two shades of brown and a beautiful bright red. I had four peices total, of really nice quality fairly thick leather, and I was trying to think of what […]
My sister Martha finds all kinds of great things when she’s out and about sifting through flea markets, thrift stores and estate sales and she sent me this gorgeous hand-painted paper that decorates the cover. This journal was sewn in a style of binding called the Coptic stitch, which not only looks beautiful but also […]
Here’s Ian’s finished journal – the cover illustration was hand-drawn by me and then inlaid into the cover (I very carefully cut the faux leather cover to allow the drawing to sit flush with the cover of the book). The dragon is breathing gold-leaf fire! You can check out photos of the re-covering process here […]
When I was working in a library a few summers ago I came across a beautiful old map of Boston from 1858 – I made several copies of it, and one of them I used on the cover of this book. After transferring the image on to silk using a solvent transfer method, I painted […]
I learned this type of binding, called the Longstitch from Keith Smith’s book Volume 1: Non Adhesive Binding: Books Without Paste or Glue. The advantages of creating a book without using glue is its increased longevity. Paste or glue can be acidic, and once an acidic glue saturates paper, it will speed up the process […]