Books in the making...
Today I decided not to go to Cosmania and instead just try and work on some of the tiangge stuff for my girlfriend. It's much more fun working on these things anyway, and there's always the satisfied feeling afterwards, the feeling that you have accomplished something and you have further extended your skill set. I don't know, maybe I'm weird like that, but I'd rather be in my own "world", in my own "workshop", working on these little crafts and props.
Anyway. Since this is pretty much my whole day today, I'd talk about the book making process I use, or at least the first part of it. All the books I make start from a roll of receipt tape. I use the non-thermal one, the kind where both sides are matte and looks like it's been made from recycled paper. To me it feels like real book paper and gives that slightly worn novel book paper feel to it, unlike if I used bond paper or some other shiny paper where it'd feel more like a textbook or a technical book.
I roll the paper horizontally on a regular sized playing card. I roll it about six full times, giving me a total of twelve pages. Then I bundle five of these together and hold them in place using a clip (as you can see in the image at the start of this blog). This keeps everything neat and tidy for the next step, the laborious cutting of the pages. I create twelve pages a roll so that I could sacrifice some of the outer pages; you'd understand when I talk about my cutting technique (which is probably not the best way, but the best I have done so far, so I'm gonna stick to it for the time being).
Once I have ten of these ready, I take a bundle of the rolls and stick them one at a time on a cutting board using masking tape. This fixes the roll tight on the cutting surface, which allows me to lay a ruler and cut fairly straight. If it wasn't taped on the cutting surface, due to it's diminutive size, the roll tends to move quite a bit on the cutting board, which causes uneven cuts. Again, this might not be the best technique, but after being disappointed with the guillotine style paper cutter (I didn't take into account that such a tool would not be able to cut more than a few sheets stacked together before it gives up and does uneven and sloppy cuts), this is the most efficient way I've discovered thus far. It still hurts my fingers to keep the ruler in place and to apply enough pressure on the craft knife to cut through the roll, but it's better than what I did in the past.
Cutting all these rolls quickly results in a mound of scrap paper. Unfortunately, I have to throw these away as they're either too small or too damaged for any sort of use. Perhaps for the last bundle I'd cut, I'd keep the shavings if only so that I'd have somewhere to pour glue on without causing a mess.
What's left after all this laborious cutting is bundles of book pages ready to be glued together to form a miniature book.
I'd probably work on that tomorrow though as it's already late. I wanted to make forty tonight, but I only ended up making five. I know forty was rather ambitious, but because of the fact that I had to cut the paper manually, this was really all I could do. I'd have to work double time to get to my quota. Now however, is sleep time, so good night and have a blessed Sunday tomorrow!
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