Sneaking in a bit of making

Boy, am I glad this weekend's over! Waking up at dawn's crack to make sandwiches and nibblies, carting it in to the art school, fighting with the lone young Security Guard to get the front door open for the masterclass (two emails and numerous phone calls through the week couldn't do it. ANU Security really do live up to their acronym), running around cutting up board and paper and smoothing last minute problems...

But in between all that, I managed to make this:


This is a hard-cover wrap-around book case, using Chinese silk bookcloth. The grain of the main cloth runs one way, and on the small rectangle it runs another, so they shimmer in lovely fluid ways in the light as you handle the case. Dimensions are 26 x 14.5 cm.


Check out the toggles!


This is where the slow raunchy stripping music comes into play... da da dahh... da da da dahhhh... (I had to use the stuff that everyone else didn't want, so that's how I ended up with the clarsy brown vinyl inner) ... revealing ...


A traditional Asian five-hole binding in variegated thread! The cover paper is Japanese, with sparkly silver ink among other colours, the spine is Chinese silk paper (a really sparkly silver) and the inner paper is a very thin Chinese drawing paper, each page made up of a larger page folded in two, with the fold on the outside (ie, you bind the edges of the paper, not the fold, in opposition to how westerners do it). But that's not all!


I also made another book, with a 'hemp-leaf' stitched binding. This one has the same materials as above (just different colours), except that the inside pages are of Magnani Vergella. This has more stitches than everyone else in the class, because I had a moment of complete brain meltdown, trying to catch up to everyone after running around and drilled too many holes. But there's always a solution, and in fact, my book was much admired for its extra stitches. Phew!


So this is the boxed set.


And here's a bit of detail. Purty, don't you think? I'm very happy. worth all that running around. Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves too.

Time for bed!