Making print books

posted in: Artwork, Printing
PrintBook_1 ©KarenSmith
PrintBook_1 ©KarenSmith

Saving test prints in a Japanese bound book

I’ve recently been pulling a lot of test lino prints. Whilst OK, they are not good enough quality to sell or even give away, but still too pretty to chuck in the bin! So I decided to make small books from them.

Making a book

I collected all of my prints and sorted them into paper types. As they were test prints I’d just ripped the paper into rectangles for use in the printing process, and I really liked the scrappy look, so I tore down three edges of the paper close to the print, and on the 4th edge left a little white paper space for the bound edge of the book.

I clamped the stack of prints together with clips, and then punched an odd number of evenly spaced holes along the edge of the paper I wanted to bind.

I used thin hemp cord to sew the sheets of paper together using Japanese stab binding technique. As ever YouTube is a rich resource of tutorials on this method of simply binding papers together.

How I will use the books

I really like the idea of keeping these books on hand as reference when creating further prints (I’m trying to make a modified printing press – I’ll blog about it in the future).

I also have an exhibition coming up next week (02/06/19) at Beaumaris Library, Melbourne, and plan to show these as part of a display explaining my creative design process.

Leave a Reply