Liquid Amber – a little book collection I made for me

I’m bunkered down at home with the plague aka the rona aka the covid.

Just me in my studio (oh, and husband and the dogs!), my mile-high pile of printed papers, quiet time, some needles, thread and Pinterest.

I’ve moved from my monoprinted papers to eco-printed papers and playing with the structure of books – variations of books I’ve made in the past … how can I take those structures in new directions, combine them, play with them, combine folded and stitched pieces. Essentially – Ive given myself permission to play.

While venturing down the rabbit hole that is Pinterest, I found a beautiful book structure made by Paul Keene from Tongue in Cheek Press, working with Hedi Kyle’s Blizzard Book structure. It gave me the inspiration I needed to find another way to work with the ‘crown binding’ structure aka ‘blizzard book’.

I have used a coloured, lightly textured and rather strong paper for the binding, with covers made from eco-printed cotton blankets covering board.

The little books inside are simple pamphlet stitched books using my eco-printed papers for their covers. The blankets on the covers were used for printing some of the inserted book covers.

A lot of iron was used when eco-printing these papers, so I’ve sealed all the eco-printed papers (and cotton blanket covers) with a wax polish.

Its lovely to hold – a little weight, thick, textile-textured covers with a hint of the wax polish smell lingering. Yum.

This little treasure is all for me. I have started writing again, so I will use the little books held inside the binding to capture words.

I used a deliciously textured Magnani paper for the text pages of each book. I can’t wait to start writing in them.

Work in Progress

I enjoyed making this little collection of books. Printing the papers was fun – you never really know what you’re going to get until you unwrap the cooked bundles of paper. These papers didn’t disappoint.

And as hard as it is to cut into printed papers, there is something so very special to enjoy when they take on a life of their own.