Startin' somethin' (gotta be)

Unexpected late sunshine, albeit brief, sent my children outside today ... 'cause I made them go. I joined them, of course, and decided to finally get started on my book for Butterfly. It's meant to be a doodling/playful book for my little girl, for me to journal love notes to her or tell her stories ... whatever and however it strikes my fancy.

As it was an unexpected project, I left my camera inside and was too captivated by the creative process -- and fully aware that Butterfly's tiredness put me on a time limit -- to go back in for it. Thus the G1 photos. Again. Ugh. I tried to hide the flaws with some fancy photo editing and text;)

I've been collecting all kinds of old (but destroyable) books, papers, etc. So I chose a selection of mostly vintage stuff to use for the guts.

I found this book on one of my rambles. Each of the pages inside has a little story and very sweet drawings that I'm going to use as part of Butterfly's scrapbook. The cover I had eyed for this project.

I pulled the pages out and opened the binding to give myself a place to adhere my new pages. You can see some of the (irremovable) scribbling on the inside of the back cover; I'll hide that under something. The inside cover paper is pretty intact, and I intend to preserve it for the most part.

Next was ensuring the random pages were distributed nicely and the right size to fit into the little cover. I stacked and punched the holes for binding.

I made myself a little inner sheath (the white paper) to which I bound the pages, and which I'll also glue into the exposed inner spine of the book and onto the front and back inner covers, for stability. I did a final assembly to ensure nice fit, and so on.

Next, it was time to start threading the baker's twine through the pages and out of the sheath.

See how it feeds out the back? I tied it on the outside, where the strings will be hidden and glued into the cover space I exposed in Step 3. One note: I left the binding loose here, both to ensure it wouldn't pull at and tear the pages, but also to give myself room for dimensional objects when I begin to journal. The other option, of course, is that I can always remove pages if it begins to get too full.

Next, glue the new spine of the sheath into the old, inner spine of the cover, and carefully glue the sheath flaps onto the front and back inner covers. Note: Don't make them too tight! Give yourself some give to ensure the book has some "play" while also ensuring it closes nicely:)

Admire!

OK, so small confession. The title of this post is "Startin' somethin'" 'cause I only got some of the way through before Butterfly, well ... let's just say it was time to go in. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get to complete Step 8, which was actually gluing the pages in. I'm not sure how it's going to go.

I've never done this kind of book-making before, so I'm kind of experimenting. I'm thinking the string really is too sharp for the kinds of pages I've used, but we'll see how it goes.

It's all part of the learning process.