Art Journal Swap--Part One

I joined a new swap on swap-bot for Art Journals. There are a total of five participants. Each of us is to start a journal and then send it to the other members so they can add content. Each of us is allowed to set our own theme. We could either make or buy a journal.

I decided to make my own journal. My theme is "Tell Me About Your City." After taking a class in Accordion Books and after reading the great blog by Dennis, I decided to do a concertina spine book. An accordion book is a book based on folded paper where the folds themselves become the pages. A concertina is a folded book where the folded pages become a part of the structure rather than the pages.

I called my book a Butterfly Accordion Book. The book is comprised from an accordion folded spine. The pages are long pages that are folded in quarters that fold to the center of the book. In other words, you fold a page in half and then fold the outer edges to the center. The center fold is then sewn onto the mountain folds of the concertina.

I chose 140 lb cold pressed watercolor paper for the pages and oak tag for the concertina. I have five pages for the book (one page for each participant in the exchange).

Here is one page of the journal. Each of the quarters on the left side will be folder inwards towards the center valley fold.

Here is a shot of the concertina spine with four of the pages already sewn to the mountain folds of the concertina. I had already sewn on four of the pages before I realized that I hadn't taken any pictures for the blog.

I found it easier to clip the sewn pages together while sewing the remaining pages. I also put a piece of paper between the clip and the paper so that the pages wouldn't get marred in any way.

Here is the fully opened page before it was folded and sewn onto the concertina. The beauty of this structure is that there are so many options when choosing a format to art journal. There are four continuous pages when the page is opened full. Once folded toward the center, the outer pages can be used as two sets of continuous pages or one outside page/two separate facing inner pages/one outside page. There are so many different configurations that the artist has so many options to play with.

Tomorrow, I will show you the casing in process.

Just a note: Dennis' blog gave a great tutorial on making a photo album using this concertina structure. My idea was based upon his tutorial and the class at The Center for Book Arts taught by Barbara Mauriello.