Hand-bound Recycled Mini-Coaster Books

Last year I took a wonderful book binding class at the International Printing  Museum in Torrance. It was taught by Book Artist Lucia Frias Villarreal . She has a Masters degree in bookmaking, so I feel I learned from the best! She taught us Coptic binding which was developed in Egypt as early as the second century AD. Essentially it is a stitching method where you attach your pages "signatures" to your covers.  I have collected several drink coasters from Chili's and thought they would make some great starter covers for my mini books. I had all of these wonderful Vintage images I collected to use for my Summer inspired projects, but didn't end up using all of them. So I printed out my favorites and started stitching away. Traditionally you would use a special waxed string. I ended up using bakers twine which I waxed myself using a tea light! I really loved how they came out. I used some vintage book pages from damaged books for my signatures.

{coptic edges}

{i love this vintage Barbie image}

{inside the signatures you can see the bakers twine}

{the pages are from old books, a toy collectors catalog and a family satire from the 70's}

I am thinkin of offering this for a class at the Vintage. They are so fun to make, and a bit challenging!

-Denise