Simply Curious

Yep.  Now I'm on a book-making binge.  Finally back to miniatures! 

Needs more books!

 Harken back to my Archaeologist's Study.  I designed a huge shelf for display items and books, but never managed to fill up the shelves.  Then I decided I was going to create a steampunk library, which, of course, needs books.  And then, the other week, I saw an online idea for a wall-hanging 'window box,' kind of like a shadow box made to look like a storefront with a big display window.  I got a wonderful mental image of an old fashioned shoppe window filled with used books.  Which means even MORE  books.  So I had to get moving.

About a year ago I had purchased a leather book kit by Jeanetta Kendall.  I had also slowly been collecting scrapbook papers that I thought might make suitable book covers.  Then, on Friday, I went to the scrapbooking show with my mother, grandmother, sister, and aunt, where I kind of went a little crazy tracking down appropriate book papers.  In all, I think I've spent about $100 on materials.  I figured I better justify my madness and actually produce some books!

28 books here, 12 over there, and 900 more to go . . .

So far, I've made forty, and absolutely no dent in either the supplies or filling up holes in the shelves.  I've figured out which papers work and which ones don't.  I still need to try some fabric coverings, and somewhere I have a gold pen that I need to find and test.
Jeanetta Kendall's book kit is amazing.  It comes with super-thin sheets of leather-like paper, printed with gold ink, and three sizes of little wooden blocks to serve as the interior.  There are tiny crop marks as guidelines on the 'leather', and you can use either scissors or an Xacto knife to cut out each book binding.  I painted the edges of the blocks with gold, and used Aleene's tacky glue to paste the binding to the block.  Everything fit perfectly, I had no problems, even when messy me got glue on the outside of the book.  Wiped right off!  Since I used an Xacto knife to cut them out, I still have plenty of leftover 'leather' to cover other books with - particularly if I make smaller ones.

I purchased balsa wood to use for book interiors, but the quality hasn't been that great.  Since we just got a new set of unwanted yellow and white pages dropped off, I thought I would use the white pages to cut and make up my own interiors.  It might be a bit more work, but hopefully it will add some extra realism.

I'm not against buying books.  I'd like to buy one of each at Treefeathers, if only she had that option!  I just need to be careful and get books that are properly in scale - so many look too big!  I also want to design my own, particularly the spines.  I can pull lots of covers off the internet, but not so much the spines, which is generally all you get to see of a book on a shelf, anyway.  Maybe I should just take a camera in to a library or bookshop and photograph those.

Yes, I have a book issues. There are books in every room in the house, and I think there should be more.  Lone books just look so sad, they need lots of friends!