Cut Paper Herbarium

This flower is made of layers of cut paper in the style of herbariums of Mary Delany.
(I did not make it anywhere as good as her, look up her work!)

Peacocks and Music

 The cover is triple layered to create a dimensional effect to the peacocks (the blue is a lower layer). The background is tea stained and the rest hand inked. This was a wedding present so it takes its cue from the theme. Both the groom and bride are musicians so I thought it was an appropriate poem.

 This is a rare closed spine book for me. It's 3 3 signature bindings set into the same spine but I set one of them (the green one) upside down to really overlap the bindings.

The interior pages are quality paper and the end papers are the rest of the poem by O'Shaughnessy.

Bones

I haven't made an entire, more-than-one-signature in over a year now but happily, it was like I'd never stopped! Apparently, I won't lose my bookmaking skills despite no practice. It might be because while I don't make books nowadays, I do think about making them and it was a very complicated dream in which I made a Belgian Secret Binding that made me finally make this book. It's for my master's dissertation adviser and really I ought to have given it to him back in January or February. Unfortunately, this is typical-I can go years without giving gifts out and then suddenly, really randomly, I make up for it.
Anyhow, onto the book itself!

my adviser is an archaeozoologist and though I am not, I nonetheless have the Collins bone id guide from which I traced these bones in order to cut them out of the greenish/blueish cover paper. The bones expose a light green brocade paper underneath. It's a slightly odd sized square.

the end paper is a British bought paper and was chosen b/c I admire his very methodical approaches to archaeological problems and this strikes me as a very methodical paper.

I was stymied on what binding the book wanted and ended up with my coptic zigzag-partially b/c I love it and partially b/c it put me in mind of the jagged ends of broken bones...which is what an archaeologist usually sees

Heraldic

cut out to show striped (recycled newspaper) paper

binding is doubled twisted link and kettle
intended as a gift

Tile

Cut out cover. Design comes from a rather popular design for medieval tiles.

Binding is twisted link and kettle, doubled over with thread shift
created as a gift.

Vines

Cut out of grape vines with handmade tinted denim paper underneath

internal shizen end papers

binding is a double, twisted link and kettle. I usually wouldn't do such a harvest style color scheme but the colors suit its recipient

usually link and kettle is done just once giving alternating stitch and blank bits on the spine...but I went twice, both to strengthen the binding and to suit the twist and curl of vines (...left unpruned?)

this is NOT a viable binding!

Another of the gift books. This one gave me a headache because I broke my own rule-don't do risky variations with books you must have professional-looking at the end. Well it really didn't work out and I ended up with strangely spaced holes in my covers (and had to scrap the signatures)...and of course, it's meant for one of the people I respect the most! *sigh* It came out alright in the end but the process...was terrible!

FLW

I admit, I haven't made a lot of books lately...

cover is cut out with an xacto knife with handmade denim paper underneath

double needle coptic modified into circles

Close-up of binding.
This is meant as a gift...I'm giving books as gifts to a few people whom I respect a lot at the end of the semester and so am nervous about them and am intent on making them as unique and unreproducible as possible...