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Making Books

I've seen a few crafty blogs (here and here) where they've made books lately. I decided to try my hand at it for three reasons:

1. I wanted to buy sketch books for the kids and me for Nature Journals and such, but it's Buy Nothing Challenge month.


2. I have the materials on hand. Plain printer paper, embroidery thread, etc.
3. It's a way to artfully use the kids' and my watercolor paintings (from way back in Waldorf preschool days...)

Kitty helped!The finished books. Aren't they lovely? Thanks to the kids' beautiful watercolors. They helped pick out their favorite watercolors for book covers and saw the process, but the sewing was kind of hard so I did that. I'm glad to have them see me "making do" and making it beautiful, too. One of my favorite sayings is this...

Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Do without

A good old Yankee verse, I think. Probably got a lot of use in the Great Depression, and perhaps will come back in vogue in this current recession/depression we're having.

I guess "necessity is the mother of invention"! (Another good saying.)

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Comments

Stacie said…
Is is just computer paper, a paper cover, and sewn together with a regular needle? What kind of thread did you use?

I like the idea of making my own journals!
2:00 PM
denise said…
We love making all types of books from paper we already have - including those nature journals.

Yours turned out GREAT! Very Nice! :)
2:56 PM
Lisa Zahn said…
Yes, it's just printer paper, thread (I used embroidery thread 4-6 strands thick) and a regular largish needle. The covers are heavy-duty watercolor paper on four of the books. One painting was on thinner paper so I glued it to a manilla file folder cut down to size. I used Elmer's glue for this, just cutting the paper slightly bigger than the manilla folder and folding the watercolor "cover's" edges down to glue them on. This was a bit tricky to do. I'd go with thicker paper if possible--the watercolor paper that's almost like a piece of lightweight cardboard.

Each journal has about 5 or 6 pieces of folded paper in it, yielding 20 or so book pages.

Any other questions? The links I posted have better instructions!
6:25 PM
Jess said…
So creative! Those look awesome, good thing you have a few artist handy for such an occasion ;)
7:47 AM
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