Marketside Baseball Book

Marketside Baseball Book- Measures: 7 1/4 x 12''. Started: Nov. 15, 2017. Completed: Jul. 27, 2017.

This journal was an interesting one to make. I spent several days working on it and only just finished it a day ago before photographing the results.

I had to make adjustments along the way, and cover up a few mistakes. The internal cover which I sewed my three signatures to was cut a bit short, so I had to disguise the edges with some washi tape. The mustache washi seemed fitting enough for a baseball book.

The full cover is made from a Marketside pizza box which had come with some baseball cards inside. To fill in the space which was once a window to show the product, I created my own baseball paper texture using a circle stencil, felt pens, and red gel pen.

Both signatures are plain white sketch paper cut to size from a very large paper pad. The thickness of the paper is a nice quality, and blank books are of course friendly for decorating however one pleases.

I started the project back on Nov. 15, 2016, mentioned about the beginning of it here. I didn't actually get to working on it till nearly a year later.

It all started from a pizza box.

Whole Foods Mini Bag Books

Had some fun with making a mini book for your purse to write down grocery lists, keep coupons and receipts in the front and back pockets of the cover, keep labels of foods you like the most and where you found them, or the book can be used like any journal for whatever.

I made this book from a mini Whole Foods paper bag (the kind they put glass bottles in). When folded it became the cover of my book, and then I cut down a larger bag from Whole Foods for the pages.
I sewed in my single signature with green twine, and then made a cardboard button closure by stamping on some white scrap packaging, fussy cutting it, and then poking a hole. I sewed it on and made a shank with my thread, leaving excess twine to wrap around the book and button.

Extra mini booklets and items came out of the project, three mini books (left), and a type of prototype paper wallet (right).

One of the mini booklets has a harder cover because it was paper from the bottom of the bag. Scraps from cutting down the large bag were left, so I put together the ones that were the same width and then sewed them together with the same green twine.

These minis could be used for the same purpose of keeping notes and grocery lists while on the go.

222 Plate Box notebook

Awhile back I had saved these pretty boxes which once held peacock and paisley decorated plates. They were pretty, and I thought of multiple ideas on how to use them.

Several days ago I put these boxes to use, and made two of them into a book cover. Mom had a notebook that was falling apart and I kept the pages together with a clip till I was ready to work on it. The original cover was tearing away from the end papers, and it was once sewn with a coptic stitch style. I decided to replicate this, but with a new cover and a few added papers to pull things together.

I followed the instructions by Sea Lemon on Youtube to get the coptic stitch right, and in the end was pleased with the binding.

It looks interesting from the side, allows the book to lay completely flat when open, and doesn't require me to make a spine.

The stitching that holds the cover to the pages is exposed from the front and back. It kind of looks like a Japanese binding in some ways, but more flexible.

For the inner covers I used white card stock and stamped it with some of my favorite paisley styled stamps, to match the design of the box. I coated these stamped papers with Liquitex satin varnish.

I had to add some papers to loose front and back pages so I could fold them in half and add them to a signature. This only needed to be done in two spots of the book, on the front signature and the back signature.
I used some tan calligraphy paper for this, to go with the cream shade of the note pages which had slightly tan grunge patterns printed on them.

The front signature's added page came out a bit shorter than it was suppose to, but I left it. Thankfully the back signature came out properly.

Most of the signatures had been sewn together, so I yanked out the old thread that had broken in places, then used new cording to bind it through the already existing holes.

One odd thing about my experiment with the coptic stitch is that it left a slight gap between some signatures, which doesn't bug me, it's just a note to remember stitching might not tighten as much as it could.