31.2 x 23.8 x 3.9cm
Pre-made book block bound in library style, with hand-sewn headbands and half binding in brown calfskin. Insets of toddler-assisted hand decorated paste paper, pastedowns of coloured paper, and flyleaves of banana fibre tissue.
I bound this album for my mother in law, Sheila Sutherland, to hold photos of her grandchildren. It's based, loosely, on the brown and purple photo album we gave her for Christmas.
The only element of real note is the paste paper I used for the insets, which I decorated together with my three year old son Alex. We achieved the purple color by painting the paper red, then painting my hands blue and shaking hands. Then we rubbed our blue hands all over the paper, trying to make swirls. The colour came out too even, but he had the idea of using his nails to make the ligher patterns, which really make the paper what it is. He's a talented kid, and gave me a sweet memory to bind into the book.
I was really pleased with the technical execution of this album - when I'm not doing something totally experimental and risky, I'm finally able to do bindings that are reliably good.