Utah National Park Book

As a final project to the bookbinding class I took with Emilie Sayward Henry, I decided to create a book of photos from my recent trip through the Southwest. My family visited seven National Parks in all, five of which were in Utah. I wanted to create a book that gave a taste of our trip -- not a photo album with 100 photos, because really, who other than the ones in the photos want to look at that? I wanted to do a small book, with no words, that would be a conversation starter for anyone who saw it.

I decided to do an accordion book with five sections. Each section would be about one of the Utah parks we visited. The only words would be the title of the National Park.

The book paper is a light gold color, which I thought went well with the orange, brown, and red shades of the rocks in the photos. The photos are color copies that were enlarged slightly and glued to wide drawing paper. The paper had to be at least twice the width of the photos so two photos could fit per folded page. Each section has only one folded page but can fit four photos.

 

Bookbinding Fun

I recently took a bookbinding class with Emilie Sayward Henry at the Armory Art Center. For this eight-week class, Emilie taught us a variety of book bindings, including stitched books, folded books, glued books, hard covers, and boxes. My favorite was the making of hard covers. I guess I like these because they give such a professional look to the book.

My book is the one on the right. It has one signture and that is stitched onto the cover. I tied my knot on the inside of the signature, while the book in the middle is tied on the outside. The book on the left does not have any pages sewn in yet. The spines of these books are covered with book cloth.

My same book is on the left here, and you can see how I used a complimentary paper for the end papers.

These books have a glued binding, known as a perfect binding. My book is the one on the right ...

... and here on the left.

Here are some other books that were made by my classmates. This book is an accordion with cutouts and a matching box to hold the book.

These are fabric-covered books, done with no stitching. We used iron-on adhesive. Mine is the book on the right.

Accordion books with tabs.

This book is the final project made by one of my classmates. Very nice.

Double accordion book.

Books with paper covers. Mine is on the right.

Twist books.

Flexagons and tetra-flexagons.

Paper pamphlets.

Tomorrow I'll post photos of the book that I created for my final project.