my new stash

I just finished binding a few more artist sketchbooks. In good time, as I am on the last pages of the purchased Lama Li Journal used in the past few months.

These are made of a variety of papers I had on hand, plus a few purchased while I was in Texas. Watercolor papers are hard to find locally for journals. They must be either mail-ordered (a problem because most places require a 10 sheet minimum; it takes only 2 sheets to make one journal), or picked up while traveling. The only brand sold in Wichita is Arches, which does not fold well for binding.

The square multi-print book is made up of a combination of Stonehenge All Media paper, purchased in pad form, and Mi-Teintes toned paper. This particular pad of paper has the grain running across the pad, making it easy to fold each sheet to make up folios. Since I wanted this journal to be square, there was a leftover piece from each page which was used for the small red landscape journal.

Before beginning, I planned out the journals in my present journal. Later as I worked, I added a snip of the papers used for each one; hopefully this will be a good reminder for next time. The square red journal was made at a friend's request; I gave it to her before remembering to take a photo of it.

This time I tried a new way of sewing the folios together, using more of a running stitch with cloth tapes. But I've decided that I prefer using a coptic stitch. Seems to be much sturdier. I still glue a reinforcement bit of loosely woven cloth to the spine that takes the place of the cloth tapes.

The colored paper used to cover a couple of these is a handmade paper found at a blueprint - drafting supply shop in Wichita. The rest are using various scrap-booking papers. I would like to add some kind of embellishment or graphic work on the front of the others, but can't seem to come up with any creative ideas right now.