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_refugee_  ·  2708 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: THE ART OF COLLAGE, OR, FUCKIN’ BOOKBINDING, PART DEUX

Wallll, shucks. Thanks. That's really nice to hear!

The burgundy and gold flower pattern is among my favorites as well, also the swirly orange. I've repurposed several haven't-been-worn-in-nearly-recent-enough-times clothes for most of the fabric book covers. It's a cool way to re-use the material, especially if the shirts don't fit, or have holes, or belong to your ex-boyfriend, or I guess you can't wear 'em anymore but are sentimental enough you can't throw them away, neither.

I have not have any improvement with the wrinkles because I got kind of frustrated and stopped. I do use a bone folder which is a tool for smoothing and folding - to smooth pieces when I am gluing them. It seemed to work but ripples began to appear as the collages dried, even if they seemed smooth when wet.

I do wonder if the cardboard book boards I am using aren't helping. The wine-heart I just glued on paper and I am not noticing any significant wrinkling. I wonder if the cardboard makes it so the glue dries from outward in and maybe something about having wet glue under dry glue maybe leading to the top collage layer warping out slightly while the bottom layer is still wet and drying. Idk, sounds good, doesn't it?

I get wrinkles even with a glue stick which I really think shouldn't be happening. But I do think the "going slow" - really, "going as slow as you can possibly go" - might help. You can always go slower, right? That's my current approach.

I'm so flattered and glad you like them! My goal was to create sufficient varied quality product over the next year as there's an annual Arts festival near me every September. I want to do some things besides books, maybe stationary or envelopes or etc, something that would give my booth more variety. I also want to try paper making, even though I've previously decried paper making as one of the most pointless "crafts" of all time - as generally, to make paper, you tear up old paper, get it wet, and shape it into new paper sheets. If that isn't a lot of activity disguising total stasis I don't know what is, but I think hand made paper would be a selling point. And give my books another special quality/defining characteristic/whatever.

Might as well go whole hog, basically, amirite?