Expressive Handmade Books Details From the back cover: Using many wonderful techniques and materials, you'll learn the art of bookmaking from an artist with 20 years' experience. You'll find projects with different structures, from circle accordions to multiple signature bindings. Others incorporate distinctive elements, including pop-ups, pockets, and origami pages. Each design will give meaning to the story you choose to tell. From the cover flaps: Handmade books take many forms, from volumes with accordion-folded pages to editions with sewn signatures. Alisa Golden shows you how to create a varied assortment of books that will enhance both text and illustrations. Beginners will learn many creative techniques, while experienced bookmakers will build new skills and find inspiration. Because content often dictates form, Golden suggests first considering what you want to include in your book. She then recommends creating sketches, gathering photographs, and assembling the materials that will help support your idea or feeling. Then you can use the necessary tools and supplies and try basics like scoring, folding, and cutting. Most of the chapters offer a theme to consider. The projects, 25 in all, may be created with those themes in mind or with one of your own. Suggestions for covers and bindings accompany each. Circle accordions prove that a book doesn't have to be complicated to be interesting. They require no sewing; you simply use self-adhesive linen tape to bind the pages together. Alternatively, you may fold the paper into irregularly shaped panels and add pockets. The single-signature book is generally known as a pamphlet—sheets of paper folded in half, nested, and sewn at the fold. By making several and joining them, you can create a book that explores different facets of a theme. The multiple-signature project has four holes and four signatures, each with four pages. Adding altered text from an existing book to your project and exposing stitching over paper strips are just two of the additional techniques covered in this chapter. Certain book structures encourage skimming for an interesting word or thought, following it, then starting again, and going forward and back. These projects, like origami pocket pamphlets and flexagons, make reading a book like playing a game or wandering in a garden. In another chapter. Golden presents a range of covers and closures, from split-board binding to ribbons and paper clasps. The final series of projects, including a Collage Book and a Dream Connections Book, expand upon previously learned structures. These volumes are perfect for displaying memorabilia. Golden takes both a practical and thoughtful approach to this remarkable craft. About the author: Alisa Golden is a book artist, printmaker, teacher, and writer. Her work is collected by universities and libraries across the country. Golden is the author of Creating Handmade Books and Unique Handmade Books. Sample page Hard cover, 158 pages. Price: $45.00 ($40.91) Contents: Preface Acknowledgments WAYS TO BEGIN Beginning with Form About Tools and Materials Tools for Bookbinding Useful Media for Writing and Making Images About Paper Measuring Scoring, Folding, Cutting Adhesives About This Book Key to Diagrams PLAY IT AGAIN: CIRCLE ACCORDIONS Once and Always: Choosing Content Adding Words Circle Accordion Circle Accordion with Pockets Photograph or Notebook Box Making a Box of Any Size DREAMS, FLAGS, AND MORE ACCORDIONS Japanese Album Accordion Seven-or Eight-Paneled Book Single-Flag Book Pocket Flag Book Multiple-Flag Book File Flag Book Cards Book SIDE BINDINGS AND SEWN SIGNATURES Thread and Needles Single-Signature Book Pop-Up Accordion with Laced Edges Side Binding with Tabbed Pages Multiple-Signature Binding Altered Text Exposed Stitching over Paper Strips Coptic Binding with Accordion FOLDS AND TWISTS: BOOKS WITH MULTIPLE PATHS Shorts Book Origami Pocket Envelope Origami Pocket Pamphlet Double Binding Check Book House Book Rocket Book Tetra-Tetra Flexagon Square Flexagon COVERS AND CLOSURES: KEEPING IT ALL TOGETHER Wrapped Hard Cover (Non-Adhesive) Covering Separate Boards (Adhesive) Split-Board Binding Case Binding Wraparound Portfolio Recesses Reliefs Ribbons Magnetic Strips or Velcro Bone or Polymer Closures Paper Clasps SORTING THROUGH THE BIG BOX Single-Focus Book Collage Book Book of Favorites Theme Book Dream Connections Book Memorial Book Recycled-Text Book: Sorting Through the Mail Visual Lettering and Words on a Receptive Page Moving Forward Contributors Index