projects #2, 3, 4: remnant books

I made 3 books today! Thus projects #2, 3, 4 are born. These books were made completely out of materials I already had: the covers are made from paper bags, and the inside paper is all left over from other books I've made. There wasn't enough of any one kind of paper to make one full book, so I combined them all together and ended up having enough for 3 books! (So maybe I did have enough to make one with all the same paper after all...? But this is more fun.) The paper bag covers add a cool element because their openings form a pocket in the covers. Some of the pages are lined, some are unlined, and some are graph paper, so to kind of tie them all together I dug out some stamps that I've had for who knows how long and added a different stamp in the corner of every third page or so. I've been dying to use these stamps for something, anything, but this was the first project where I felt like they would really work well.

Here you can see the back cover of the white bag book. I unfolded and opened up the bottom of the bag, then folded it down to create a lip for the pocket so you can put things in it and they won't fall out. Also, the thread you see is attached onto the back cover with a little scrapbooking brass brad type thing and there is one on the front too so you can wind the thread around them to close the book securely.

This is a close up of one of the graph paper pages. The stamp here was a lovely gift from my favorite Jen-friend for my birthday last year (maybe Christmas?) based off of the short movie entitled "Validation" starring the amazingly curly-haired TJ Thyne. It's a little long (10 minutes) but it's worth watching, I promise! Do it.

Another page close up. If you look along the bottom of the page you can see the holes where it used to be bound into a spiral sketchbook. I bought this paper a long time ago and used it in a journal that I made for my dad when I first started bookbinding. It's a little thicker than what I would choose now, but it works great as the cover page for this book because the brown bag cover is a little fragile. The stamp I bought at Michael's for $1 or something and really like it a lot for some unexplainable reason.

I bought the "E" stamp on this page in one of my many east coast travels. I can't remember where I bought it exactly, but I do remember it was this amazing little print shop and they had a million stamps for sale and of course I wanted all of them but could only justify buying one, an "E" for Elton. Of course now I wish I had an entire alphabet of this lettering because I can think of a million and one things to do with it.

The back cover of one of the brown books. You can see how the bag forms a nifty little pocket. The stamp on the mirroring page was hand set by yours truly using this awesome stamp set my daddy bought me at Staples because he loves me. Also because it's awesome.

I discovered this stamp in my stamp box. I'm not sure where it came from. I think the mom bought it? The cool thing about it is that it sticks onto a clear block so that you can see exactly where you're putting the stamp AND if all the ink has come off the stamp itself. Despite its antiquated image, this is clearly the stamp of the future.

This is just a close up of the book spines so you can see the pamphlet stitch I did to sew them together. Also I liked how the books looked all stacked together... That is all.

Hooray for 31 Projects in May!