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I spent a lovely day a couple of weekends ago at a workshop run by the Canberra Bookbinders' Guild. The workshop was Gelli Printing and concertina bindings. Gelli printing is essentially mono-printing without a press. It can give some very exciting results.  
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I borrowed Mary Kaye Seckler's 'Book Arts' book from a friend because I wanted to try out the 'Geisha's Hideaway'. It is a really lovely book to look at with skewers used as closures. Inside the covers is a book block and a pencil case. Just gorgeous. The first hurdle to overcome was the amount of paper required to cover this book. It needs a 45.7 cm or 18 inch length of paper just for the surrounds. This would have been easy before I knew about such things as paper grain! Previously (in blissful ignorance) I would cut up the paper to suit myself - easy! With the advent of knowledge this made life better in some respects (fewer misshaped books) but also harder making sure that the grain of the book board matched the grain of the paper. For this book I decided to do some gelli prints on old maps so that I could get the length as well as the grain required and because I love gelli printing. Gelli printing is great fun and I generally use leaves to make the patterns. See gelli prints. This time I used a lino print of a butterfly. That worked well too. The first part of the process went really well and was finished very quickly. I was so pleased with both the time taken as well as how easy it was to follow the instructions. Yes, well, pride etc. The next bit was the pencil box that looks so cute. The pencil box needs to fit before the book block is put into the book case. First of all I couldn't remember how to make and cover a box and I couldn't work out the instructions either. Managed to get all that together after numerous attempts and made a very credible box. Just lovely. Now to fit it into the book case. Sob... it is too high! I will have to start over with the pencil box. Hmmm.... I think that I will leave it to another day.
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