Bookbinding: DIY Tips, Tools, & Links

June 1, 2020

I am looking forward to getting back into the Print Lab at the AC. One of the things I wanted to do last semester and over the spring, was to produce some custom handmade books. Bookbinding is a lot of fun to do it, is amazing to see a finished book come together and it is surprisingly easy.

Here is a list of resources:

Books:

I have read quite a few but the two I like the best are:

Making Books: A Guide to Creating Hand-Crafted Books by London Centre for Book Arts, Simon Goode, Ira Yonemura
Making Handmade Books 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms Golden, Alisa J.

The first book is produced by the London Centre for Book Arts which is a really hip organization and it is reflected in their modern stylish book. You can an ebook so it is always accessible on your phone. The second book is at the Ottawa Public Library, so when you can borrow it from the OPL. Both offer easy step by step instructions and are great resources to have on hand.

Online:

The web is vast and resources are plenty but these are three I go back to often:

DIY Bookbinding is a site with articles, it leans more toward written content than video at times. I was drawn to the site because of the article How To Build a DIV Bookbinding Jig. A very handy device. The DIY Bookbinding Tutorials by Sea Lemon is a series (Youtube Mix) of her videos, 80% of the vids are on bookbinding. There is one on making slime and another on snow globes but the rest are excellent bookbinding tutorials. The last is a Skillshare course and it is quick and informative and shows you everything for making a Perfect Bound Book (Paperback).

These are all quick access resources, yes even the books are too, as they are divided up into small projects, very short reads. They also have very digestible sections on theory and history.

Tips

“You are going to screw up, so be patient. “

Who said that?t Me!! Bookbinding does not take long to do though, I can produce a quick book in 15 minutes of actual work time and a few hours or overnight of glue/drying time. This comes with practice of course, often the little journals and sketch pads I make are quick and dirty. I use scarp prints or canvas lying around and any paper left over from craft projects with Abby. It is just very cool to reach for a sketch pad and know you actually made it. Also once you make one you will be addicted because you will realize how easy they are to make. You can also get a little OCD and carried away when it comes to bookbinding. You have been warned!!

tools

The resources listed above will give you plenty of lists to get you started, my only addition here is to let you know you can literally purchase all the tools for under $50. The cutters, presses, and fancier equipment can get expensive, but I got you covered as those links are very DIY. If you are a crafter or sewer, you will most likely have this stuff around your place anyway.

The one thing I did make on the super cheap, with the help of my awesome father-in-law, is two wooden bookbinding presses. I used the Sea Lemon’s tutorial on how to make a press. The only difference is I used scrap wood/offcuts, my father-in-law is a woodworker and a carpenter so it was easy to find some offcuts that worked. I also like upcycling anything to make something new. It is great for the environment and great for the soul. Here are a few pics of us in action, power tools and all.

Cutting The Off Cuts

Sanding The Edges

Clamp Top & Bottom To Prep For Drilling

Drill Through Both While Clapped

11.5" x 10.5" Bookbinding Press With Carriage Bolts & Wing nuts

8.5" x 8.5" Bookbinding Press With Carriage Bolts & Wing nuts

Double-sided Paper Photo Books

My goal is to produce custom photo books within the Photography Program I teach at. We have all the gear we need, we just need some students (Oooo COVID go away!!). For photographic ink-jet paper… MOAB they make several awesome double-sided papers.

Matte Lasal
Luster Lasal Photo
Fine Art Entrada Rag

The only one I have not tried is the Entrada Rag but if it is the same as its single-sided sibling it is amazing. The luster is not very common in double-sided paper and I was very impressed with it. Very nice colour and tonal reproduction, so excited to see a double-sided luster paper!!

Street Portraits Notebook

Here is one of my latest notebooks made using a scrap canvas print from my Street Portraits series. A portrait of Rafael taken by Wallack’s on Lisgar St. in Ottawa that was printed on Epson Exhibition Satin Canvas.

Rafael Street Portraits Notebook Front

Rafael Street Portraits Notebook Back

Rafael Street Portraits Notebook Signature Page

Happy bookbinding, and if you have any questions feel free to send me an email, reach out via social media, or post a comment below.

Sewing: Lined Zipper Photo Pouch

May 31, 2020

Sewing Refresher

Sewing is a lot of fun, it is like origami with fabric, and I love origami. Unfortunately, I do not get to sew as often as I like, busy with the kid, life, work, etc.. Lately though, social distancing and all, I have had some free time. However, what I needed first was a sewing machine refresher so online I went.

There are plenty of sites out there with sewing tips. Youtube is my go-to for how-to, but it can be a bit of a rabbit hole. Sometimes the suggested videos grab, let us just say, too much of my attention. So off to Skillshare and luckily I found the perfect course, Quick & Dirty Sewing: Machine Crash Course. It is good, as long as you have some experience with a sewing machine, and it is quick 25 minutes. The production quality is a little dirty but the info is just what I needed. If you are wondering Skillshare has some excellent courses. Now they are offering 2 months free with a subscription, and you can cancel before they charge you.

The next thing I did was a quick online search for our sewing machine manual, I love the web!! The manual is always good to have and a digital copy on your phone is great. Digital manuals are searchable and always onhand, cause we are all attached to our phones. Another cool find the Kenmore Sewing Machine 19233 instructional vids:

Remember DVDs, I do, but I also remember watching my first Betamax tape, the making of Thriller, too funny.

Research: Lined Zipper Pouch

Why sewing and why cases you ask? While working on my Masters I became fascinated with printing photographs on canvas and fabric, then embroidering the prints. Embroidery adds another dimension to a print, it is tactile, rasied and it gives the print a completely different feel. Here are a few pics of David from the Street Portrait series.

After completing a few pieces I wanted to experiment with sewing the printed works. Life got in the way, so the idea ruminated with me for a few years and then I thought how about pouches/cases. I love pouches I have quite a few and use them for storing and organizing everything from my change to audio gear.

So once my refresh was complete time for some project research, making pouches/pencil cases how-tos videos. I found MADE Everyday the instructor, Dana, is very knowledgeable. Her teaching style is relaxed, and the video and audio quality are excellent. I like watching videos that are well produced as they help me focus, as I am not distracted by the bad video or audio quality or editing. Dana’s, How to sew a lined Zipper Pouch--great for Beginners! covers everything you need to make very cute pouches and cases.

She also has a few other related vids:

How to Laminate Fabric & How to Sew a Zipper, TWO ways

I did not know that you could easily make those cute laminated pouches/cases that are so popular, the ones you see by the art supply store checkout, with fabric. Her zipper vid covers everything you need to know about zippers. She also has plenty of other vids on just about everything to do about sewing a great resource.

end goal

What I would like to do is produce and sell a line of pouches, all handmade. Something to support a charity or a local charity. Food, food security and food education has always been a passion of mine. So supporting the Parkdale Food Centre would be my charity of choice. Lindsay and I were tossing out ideas the other night about a line of pouches/cases of local business and their owners, or of colourful locals and landmarks of a neighbourhood, i.e. Hintonburg. Then branching out to other neighbourhoods in Ottawa.

Happy sewing, and if you have any questions feel free to send me an email, reach out via social media, or post a comment below.

Drawing On The Past

December 13, 2019

My mother had a drawing on the fridge in the basement when I was a kid, it was a still life of shoes. It was drawn done by her I found out out years later, a talent my mother never fully pursued. Life got in the way kids, work, etc. but she always encouraged the arts in her kids, I took drawing classes at the Royal Ontario Museum in the summers with my friends Jeremy and Michael, some of my fondest memories as a kid. Drawing for me too eventually became a talent not fully pursued. Then I had a child, Abby, and I realized the power of the little things in life, the subtle nudges you get growing up, the drawings on a fridge, and realized that I should leave some of my own. So recently I decided to relearn how to draw, here is what I did and how I got there.

The What & The How

The internet and the public library are powerful tools to learn just about anything, setting aside the time to learn is the hard part but like anything if it is important to you, you will find the time. My three best resources are the book You Can Draw Anything, by Kim Gamble, the online course Drawing Foundations: Fundamentals by Will Kemp, and my Pinterest Drawing Board. What worked for me was watching, reading, and practicing, the last part took the longest. Besides practice the three biggest things I learned from these resources:

Circles, Squares and shapes are great aids in drawing.
An eraser is a tool to help you draw.
Quiet the left side of your brain when drawin, it does not help.

One of the best exercises in Kim Gamble’s book was drawing an elephant inside a rectangle using the least amount of lines. The rectangle helps keep the proportions by defining an area, and simplifying your drawing to the fewest lines possible reveals that less is often more. Will Kemp and the how tos on Pinterest also talk about the using shapes to help define a person or thing while drawing. It is the initial steps, drawn lightly, that you build upon later with thicker more confident lines.

Will Kemp’s course is a great intro to the basic skills and tools for drawing. For me his use of the eraser to help define a drawing by subtraction was amazing as I realized that negative space plays such an important roll in drawing and that it is alright to make mistakes. The proper tools are extremely important to use but do not need to be expensive a 3B pencil, eraser and note pad will run you about $10 dollars.

A brilliant exercise by Will Kemp is drawing a tree, we all when starting out draw the same child like illustration of a tree that looks more like broccoli. This is the left side of our brain drawing from memory, utilizing what we know as a kid. The left side is logical and corrective and surfaces when we begin to struggle to help us make “sense” of things. To truly see and draw something you need to let go of this side and, for lack of a better phrase, go with the flow when drawing.

Some Work

I am surrounded by kids books and some have amazing illustrations so I have been drawing some of favs.

maker journal