 Kristy Higby’s Red Ghost |
After working all day getting ready for the Book Arts Jam this Saturday, I was in the mood for a mindless break from folding and gluing. An email from my friend Sharon provided me with the perfect fodder: a post she found called 10 Brilliant Book Artists. I spent a happy hour clicking through all the links before going back to making flip books. (Kristy Higby’s book to the right is one of the books mentioned.)
Several people have asked me about doing bigger prints with my wood type. I’m experimenting with 16×20″ reproductions of my original letterpress prints. I’ve now got four different designs in my shop. They are printed on thick white Lettra and printed on a high-end Epson printer. Take a look at them here.
This great typography pillow is hand block printed by Stacy & Mark at 1Girl1Boy. They also have square coasters, little wristlets, pouches and moleskine notebooks, all with the same design. You can see it all in their Etsy shop.
One of the problems with making your own books using an ink jet or laser printer is how to print them without lots of fancy software. My first books of my artwork and stories, with two pages per sheet and double sided, required me to devise an often complicated recipe for the order to print the pages. Then I discovered single sheet books. Because they are printed all on one side of a sheet, once I had a template, they were easy to design and quick to print and put together. They end up being small — from an 8-1/2 x 11″ sheet you get a 2-3/4 x 4-1/2″ book — but very easy to work with.
Earlier this summer when I was making a book out of my haiku poems, I played around with several single sheet configurations. I was reminded how convenient they are to work with, so I wrote up some instructions and made a kit that includes directions for five different configurations and three books to make — each pre-printed and ready to fold, cut and assemble. And it also includes a Word template to use to design and print your own book from a single sheet. The kit is available here.
Don’t just toss your Netflix wrappers into the recycling bin, make Netflix Oragami.
 After School Snack by Dawn Forbes |
The International Edible Book Festival is held yearly on April 1st. Participants create edible books that are exhibited, photographed and then eaten. Here’s an example to the left, and there are lots more on this website.
I haven’t been to one, but every year when I see announcements about festival “exhibits,” I think about what sort of book I’d make. Recently I saw this Electrolux Scan Toaster prototype bread printer and thought it would be perfect to make such a book. The idea is that you plug the toaster into your computer, put a slice of bread in it, and then print.
Less science fiction is this article on how to print on edible paper with edible ink.
