She's smart and pretty!

I am really excited about this book! The idea and design for this necklace came to me all at once, kapow , and I couldn't resist making it. It's kind of steampunk or victorian, bold but still delicate. I absolutely love it! I want to keep it for myself, but I can't keep everything I make, right?

This necklace is so pretty and unusual, but the best part is that the book is fully functional. It's 80 pages of gold paper with gold endsheets, oyster-white Italian bookcloth and a stiff spine. It was even more difficult to make than the Handful of Stars book, but it still came out beautifully. It would be awesome to fill the pages with a poem, or a love note if it's given as a gift. I would melt if my man gave me this necklace, and wrote me a love note inside! (hmm, maybe he'll read this and get some ideas...) It's called the Well-Read Necklace, and it's listed on Etsy here.

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She's smart and pretty!

List of Resources for Beginning Bookbinding

There's a lot of useful information online that can be helpful to the beginning bookbinder. Here’s a list of the sites that have been helpful to me and that I have used most often, particularly when I was trying to figure out this whole bookbinding thing.

Please let me know if a link goes bad, so I can remove it or replace it.

Videos:

• Bookbinding Part 1 This is part one of a six-part series from Papierdesign on binding hardcover books. Immensely useful, the video is in English but the website is in German (although parts are translated).


• Japanese Bookbinding Another video from Papierdesign. This one is on Japanese Binding, and has no verbal instructions.


• Basic DIY Bookbinding Demonstration Detailed video on perfect (paperback) binding.


• Bookbinding: A Traditional Technique DVD excerpt that discusses paper grain.


• Coptic Bindings Stitch Demo Part 1 Pretty clear instructions, although you may need supplemental diagrams from one of the other sites listed here.


• How to Glue For Bookbinding


• Book Binding Knot Two inches from finished and out of thread? You’ll need this knot!

Instructional Sites:

• AboutBookbinding.com Contains several entire books on the subject, although they can be hard to follow.


• How to Make a simple Hardcover Book Great, easy to follow instructions.


• Single-Sheet Bookbinding Whip stitching a text block.


• BEST Tutorials Tutorials compiled by Best, the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team. Tons of other terrific resources available there as well.


• Single-Needle Chain Stitch tutorial.


• Coptic stitch tutorial. This one uses metal covers, but the technique is the same for regular books.

Suppliers:

• Hollanders Pretty much anything you could want for book arts. Their bookbinding kits are great for beginners. Great selection of artist’s, conservation and printing papers.


• Talas Another supplier with nearly everything.


• Volcano Arts


• Paper Source Tons of gorgeous papers and some bookbinding supplies too. They have some neat thread colors, but they are a bit more difficult to use than the other waxed threads.
  


• Articus Studio Design


• ArtPaper

Other Useful Sites:

• Page Calculator from mothteeth.com for printing your own books for binding


• How to Make Bookcloth & Line Thin Weight Paper Making your own bookcloth is fun and easy enough for beginners, and you can get a much broader range than the boring traditional colors that are available pre-made.


• Bookcloth Tutorial from BEST
  


• About Paper Grain I have a cookie for you if you can guess what this one's about.
  

There are a lot more sites than these out there that are just as helpful, but I think these can at least get you started bookbinding.

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List of Resources for Beginning Bookbinding