I Confess.....

......to yet another addiction (I am so weak!)  I am a journal making/bookbinding junkie!  Who'd a thunk it?  Oh, I've always admired hand sewn books and even made a very simple one or two, but then.....then.....my unintentionally (I'm sure) enabling friend Sox decided to go and post photos of her handmade journals.  First were the lace ones.  Oh my!  Then, what dragged me in was the fabulous asian inspired exposed spine book.  That was it.  I had to make one.  I did, a little sample which I blogged about the other day.  I've also prepped my covers for an asian round robin that's coming up, and just have to wait for the paper I ordered to make my signatures arrives.

However, addicts aren't known for patience.  I WANTED TO MAKE ANOTHER ONE NOW!!!!!  Then I remembered I have a whole bunch of beautiful two-sided 8x8" journal pages and one sided 8x10" background technique pages from a portfolio group I'm in.  All done by some of my favorite artsy peeps.  Why not use those?  For the larger pages, I just folded them at the 8" point (remember, they measured 8" on the other side already), which created a little bit of a page which would be perfect to "tip in" the two sided pages.  Yes, a little of one side would be hidden, but I so much wanted to use all these pages, and no, no, no, not another coil or binder ring solution.  I WANTED ANOTHER EXPOSED SPINE JOURNAL!!!

And here it is.....I even cut up the portfolio that my pages traveled around in, and it became my outside covers.

the spine

front cover (from my portfolio)



back cover (also scavanged from my portfolio)

What follows are the pages.  Any blanks or messed up ones will be covered with either paper or pages I haven't received yet, or I'll just do a background directly on them.  I DID NOT overthink the order of the pages; I just put two together to form a signature, stacked them and started sewing.  And yet, as I turn the pages, they all flow one to the next. 



There was one background page I couldn't use in a signature because it had been done on heavy cardboard.  No problem......it became my inside back cover:

Many thanks to Sox who inspired me to begin with, and Inge, who mentioned casually that she was planning to use the backgrounds she'd received in a journal.  And of course, to everyone in my journal/portfolio/mail love groups.  I think what I love most about this book is that it contains a little bit of each of you.