Have You Met My Sister, Jess?

Well, she recently turned 30. You can read about it on her blog here. I was there: it was a fun party. It was yet another occasion when I made something for someone’s birthday—in this case, it was a very nice sketchbook/notebook/journal (if I do say it myself). She’s blogged about it here. How kind. She said some really nice things about me. I love my sister.

When I created this book, I wanted to try to express something of Jess’ personality and her style. We are similar on both counts, so I was pretty sure she would like it. You can see that the book is fairly plain and simple, with blocks of bold colours on the outside, and a little bit more funky on the inside. I guess that is what my sister is like—simple on the outside, but a little bit funky-funk on the inside.

Bookbinding Nerd Details

The book is a fairly simple flat-back case binding, with 6 sections of 12 leaves each (made up of 6 sheets folded in half and gathered together) sewn onto two 10mm tapes. I used some nice 110gsm cartridge paper for the text block and some simple Kraft and Chelsea bookcloth for the covers. This is the first book I’ve put a bookmark into, and I really like the result. The endpapers were called Mumbai paper in the shop I bought them from. It’s a heavyish kind of paper that looks a little bit hand-made, though I don’t think it was quite expensive enough to actually be made by hand, and it’s screen-printed. The beautiful yellow headbands were labelled ‘Pre ’50s Headbands’ in the shop I bought them. The are your standard machine-made headbands, but sewn onto a calico strip. I trimmed the boo to size using my trusty finishing-press-and-wood-chisel setup. Nice.

Notes to Self

When casing the book in, don’t use too much paste otherwise it will seep through the paper and possible stain the other side, especially if it is screen-printed Mumbai paper.

I am really pleased with how this book turned out. It was nicely done, and looks awesome.