Wednesday, October 04, 2006

bookbinding

Thanks for the lovely birthday wishes :) Pete and I are spending the first week of our holidays just grounding ourselves before we head down to the beach. This means hanging out in the city, enjoying the art & craft supplies that Melbourne has to offer, and Pete getting ahead on a little bit of freelance. It might sound a little bit too 'worky' for a holiday, but sitting on the floor doing crafty stuff is what we love doing when we actually have spare time.

This holiday's project is bookbinding. Pete's found some awesome online tutorials on various bookbinding methods, and some vintagey book covers at a secondhand book shop to rebind with blank paper.

We weren't sure where to go for bookbinding supplies (none of the stores actively advertised it), but we found some great stuff at Melbourne Etching Supplies (go figure) and Melbourne Artist's Supplies (Little LaTrobe St). Here's what we got:


From left to right: headbanding (the decorative stripy stuff you see when you look down at the binding from above), a bone folder, binding needles, binding thread, a nice new stanley knife, binding ribbon, an awl (for making clean holes through which the binding thread goes), flexible binding glue.

If we get good at it I might post a simple tute if anyone's interested. A lot of the things above are nice-to-haves rather than must-haves.

4 comments:

leslie said...

cool. looking forward to seeing the finished product

Anonymous said...

Youre like too crafty for your own good! Id love to make my own books...maybe you can make them and Ill just buy them off you or commission you...more likely than me making them myself!

Anonymous said...

Would love to see your finished books and tutorials would be great!

Anonymous said...

Oh, I'm keen on giving this a shot too.

It'll be nice to see how you go with yours, and a tutorial would be much appreciated!

Luck with it :)