|
11-6-06 The past month has been a
flurry of stuff that was hardly journalable, at least from the standpoint of
public interest. The time was spent tweaking the
Berea Arts Council
website, getting that up and running smoothly, then tearing apart and
reassembling their FUBAR Access database. (The file had been gutted at
some point, leaving the data, but no reasonable manner of retrieving it.)
All that is finished and (in theory) I can get on with my own things.
I'm still in the roll of supportive writer's wife, attending readings and
book signings with JimT, but that's one job I'm more than glad to take on.
Things Kept,
Things Left Behind is doing well, and it's keeping him hopping. I
tag along and get to meet some of the most interesting people. Life is
good.
11-7-06 I've pulled together
this pile of stuff. Tomorrow it
will assemble itself into a book...I think. The shiny pieces are thin
copper, and I'm a little concerned about whether the bend over the cover
will produce a sharp edge. I've not worked with this thickness of
copper before and I don't know exactly what will happen. We'll see.
11-9-06 Some work had to be done on the
Arts Council's website, and so yesterday's plans became today's instead.
I've opted not to play with the copper. A few days ago, I cut my left
hand on a cat food can, and bending the copper puts a little more strain on
the stitches than I need. (Translate that as "it hurts.")
Instead, I pulled out these rolls of "cork
paper" that a friend brought back for me from Paris (yes, 'the' Paris).
It's very thinly sliced cork on a paper backing. Interesting stuff,
both visually and texturally. I keep
a stash of bookcloth and ruffled
through that looking for something that would mate up with the darkest cork.
I settled on two pieces for two books. The main thing I am interested
in at this point is discovering the working properties of the cork.
Because I'm uncertain of how well it would hold up on the corners of
bookboard, I've opted, at least for now, to use it on the front only and
protect the left outside edge with a thin piece of bookboard covered with
cloth. Making the covers is hard to explain, especially since I got
wrapped up in binding and forgot to take pictures of a couple of steps.
First, I covered the entire front piece of bookboard with the cork (no
picture). This is the beginning
of the back cover, spine and a portion of the front cover, all in one piece.
Once this was pressed and dry, I trimmed the excess from the front cover
portion and turned the edge under.
While this was in the press, I covered a piece of thin bookboard with
bookcloth for the outside edge and set that to dry (no picture). Then
I mounted that to the front cork covered piece, then mounted that to the
back/spine/front piece above. (See, I told you it was difficult to
explain without a full set of pictures.) This is a
close-up of the front of the
finished book and this shows front and back.
I'll likely do something decorative inside the wide area at the top, but not
sure what right now. The signatures are commercial linen text, but the
endsheets and pastedowns are HMP from
hickory bast and abaca. I made one other book using the same
split-cover principle but using HMP on
the front and an additional curved element. I want to combine
several of the different cork papers within a cover, but I won't be able to
get to that for a few days. |
