Final projects

Everyone posted proposals for their final project, due in just two weeks on May 13th. I especially enjoyed the proposals that included research and inspiration... they gave me a pretty convincing idea of what the projects will be about / look like. Its also exciting to think about these projects existing in the context of other writers, artists, and places.

For example:

Kelsey K's letterpressed project inspired by many different sources from entomology to "commonplace books" to Truth with a capital T;
 
Stacey's zine which is inspired by a friend as well as her ongoing interest in self-published autobiographical comics;

Kelsey G's woven treasures inspired by Joseph Cornell and a chance encounter with a stranger's writing;

and Tara's edition of gel-medium transferred mini-books inspired by hands-on research at the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection.

Our last class meeting will include a book exchange! Everyone will leave with a big stack of books. For my project, I'm completing a new edition of a project from last year. The original edition didn't work out as well as I would have liked. It was over a hundred pages and I hand bound it with pamphlet stitch -- not the best idea! Also it was so time-consuming to print, collate, trim and bind that many pages that I didn't make as many as I wanted to. So this time I used Lulu to print and bind the interior and cover. The books reached yesterday and look great! Now, I'm inkjet printing 5 key pages in full color on transparency paper and attaching them to their corresponding pages. I'm still experimenting with different ways to mount the color prints to the book pages. Here is my design for the one-piece wrap around cover:

 

I hope everyone likes the finished product!