a tiny book

At the Conservation Lab at the University Library where I work, we have a tiny conservation-themed Christmas tree. (See the slightly blurry photo below.)

Our conservation-themed Christmas tree.

So today I made my own contribution to the tree with an ornament that embodies the work that I do at the lab: clean and flatten flood books, mostly from the Cedar Rapids Czech and Slovak Library and Museum. First I cut down some scrap paper, folded it into sections, sewed it into a text block and glued it up. Cute, no?

This lil' book's pages are about 1 1/4 in by 1 in.

See how tiny it is in this normal-sized lying press? Adorable.

Here you can see the cover of the book. It is a color photocopy of the cover an actual book from the museum.
I wrapped the photocopy around a tiny piece of card stock instead of book board.
On the spine you can see the author's name, Jan Stiavnicky. Jan is a pretty popular Czech name.

This is the book with cardstock interleaving and sandwiched between book board, blotter, and remay.
This is how I flatten all the regular sized books, too.

I actually spritzed the interleaving and cover before I put it in the sealer, just like the regular books.
This is the book getting sealed in our vacuum sealer.

And here it is, the final product, hanging on the tree.

So, that's all. That's what I did today. For like 3 hours. Also, I cleaned some regular-sized books for the African-American Museum. All in a day's work.

The whole time I was working I just kept thinking about how cute little things are a wondering if that's some sort of instinctual affection that has to do with nurturing young or something. Things to think about. I also liked that I was able to use a bunch of seemingly useless paper and board scraps since I hate throwing things away. Who knows? Maybe I will now go on a tiny book making spree with all of the paper scraps in my studio. Maybe.