Finished Book Repairs

I finally got around to taking pictures of the finished book repairs.  I've been quite busy working on other projects and just never seemed to get around to it.

The book I was most concerned about had damaged corners, loose cover boards and a damaged spine.  Here are pictures of the book after the repairs were made.  The cloth I used is a darker green but it was the closest available at the time.  The original spine was trimmed and added to the cloth after the repair was completed.

You can see in the picture below that the old cloth was slit to allow the new repair to turn under the endpaper and cloth on the cover boards. It was then glued back into place.  The cloth on the cover boards was cut back from the hinges because that is going to be a place of wear.

The green kozo paper used in the repair of the corners (below) blends in much better.  The kozo can be custom dyed to make repairs practically invisible.  To save time, we used the closest match we could find in the instructor's colour stash.

I'm not an expert by any means but this workshop left me with the knowledge to tackle a few simple repairs and able to do some preventative maintenance to keep my books in good shape. 

The reference we used was "The Repair of Cloth Bindings" by Arthur Johnson which I purchased from John Neal Bookseller  (search cloth bindings).

Book Repair Workshop

It seems like forever since my last post.  I know I've been busy but obviously it hasn't been noteworthy since I can't really remember what I've accomplished.  I've just come back from a 4 day CBBAG workshop on Book Repair and Restoration.  We were to bring books that needed repair work and the instructor would demonstrate and then guide us through the necessary steps of the process.  Since not all members of the group would have the same problems to repair, we would be exposed to a varied number of issues that can occur with books over time. 

The pre-requisites for this course were Bookbinding I, II and III.  It is necessary that you be able to recognize the type of binding and sewing structure used in the book if you are going to repair the book properly as one type of binding cannot be easily replaced by another.  We looked at the repair process from a professional perspective even though it was unlikely that most of us would be undertaking it as a profession.

It was an extremely interesting course.  The instructor, Dan Mezza, was actually making repairs to a rare book at the time and was able to show us what he was doing in his role as a professional as we tackled books as amateurs.  Most of the books people were working on were from the late 19th century though some, like myself, were working on 20th century books that had sentimental value and needed strengthening to stand up to wear by the newest generation.

One of my books, was the first volume of a Children's companion set published and distributed with the Encyclopedia Britannica, called, "My Book House".  It was a series of twelve volumes that started with nursery rhymes and increased in difficulty to myths and legends.  It was edited by Olive Beaupre Miller and printed in 1954. 
Volume 1, "In the Nursery" had seen a lot of hard use through my sister and myself and then by her three girls.  Now my sister is a Nana with two young grandchildren, about two years of age.  Several of the books will need some repair work to get them ready for this new generation.  Volume 1 was definitely in need of some TLC.

You can see that the joints on either side of the spine were ripped and loose. The boards were coming away from the endpapers.

The corners were soft and splitting.

The endpaper was pulled away from the spine and pages were torn and stained.  (Paper repair and conservation is a 5th course in the series but Dan did take some time to show me how to do some simple repairs though the staining would have to wait).

This book was machine stitched, not hand stitched but the stitching was intact.  I cut away the cloth spine and saved it to be reattached later.  The book was put into a press and a paste poultice was applied to soften the existing adhesive so the paper reinforcing the spine could be removed.  I was careful not to damage the mull that covered the spine and extended over the edges into the boards.

I made a new hollow tube and applied that to the back of the spine. The cloth on the boards was cut back from the spine edge of the boards (so that it would not be a catch point when the boards were opened and closed) and it was loosened from the boards with a microspatula for about 3/4".  This was to allow the new cloth that would be placed on the spine to go under the old cloth on the boards.  The endpapers on the inner sides of the boards were also loosened at the top edges for the same reason.

A green cloth instead of green kozo paper was chosen for this  spine repair because the book was going to see heavy use by young children and the cloth would stand up to their handling better even though the repair would not be as seamless.  The priority in this repair was functionality.

For the corner repairs, the cloth at the corners was split open a little more at the edges and the layers of the boards opened (though most of the corners didn't need that step -- they were already in layers).  Paste was added to the layers, which were closed under pressure and reshaped.  You need to be careful when reshaping them that you don't reshape them more than the general appearance of the book.  Absolutely straight corners on a book curved from constant use will look odd.  Strengthen the corners and reshape them in keeping with the look and age of the book.  In my case, the boards of the book are reasonably straight so the corners were straightened as much as possible. 

After 15 minutes of pressure, the corners are left to air dry.  When the corners are dry, they may be covered in coloured kozo that has be treated with klucel G and cloth can be repasted into position.  If the colours are close, the repair will not be very obvious and the corners will be as hard as the original board.

When the hollow tube has dried on the spine, the tube is cut to the height of the boards and the sides of the tube are slit about an inch on each side, top and bottom so that the cloth can be turned.  The inner portion of the tube is cut away above the spine with a scalpel.  The would not be covered with the cloth and would look odd, so it is removed.

The cloth and spine are pasted, and the cloth is applied to the spine.  The cloth at the head and tail is turned under at the slit in the hollow tube.  The cloth at the head slides between the endpaper and the boards on the inside and the old cloth and boards on the outside.  In my case, the book had a groove and I had to be sure that I worked the cloth into this groove carefully with a teflon folder.

The old cloth on the covers was repasted on the new cloth forming the new hinge (groove).  The old spine cover was trimmed and repasted on the new cloth on the spine.

I'll post a picture of the finished repairs here as soon as I take one.

I did repairs on a second book as well.  It was a much newer book.  The only reason I even attempted repairs on this book was because I loved the illustrations so much.  I picked up the book at a garage sale and the stitching had given way on one section.  It needed resewing but it was machine made and the glue was not reversible.  There was not going to be an easy way to get to the stitching.  I tried to soak off the endpaper and ease it off but the paper tore.  I ended up with this.

One side came loose well, but the other didn't.

This side torn in several places.

This signature came out completely.

The repairs on this book were much easier.  I sewed the signature back into the book block and then used paste to fix the torn endpaper.  Because the tear was jagged, I was able to match up the front and back edges of the tear with paste so that most of the tear was invisible.  Other areas could be recoloured with a bit of watercolour paint.

The next step was to reinforce the spine with a bit of muslin and paste.  I did this to the cover so that I could work it into the weak areas of the hinges.  Next, I wrapped the text block in plastic wrap to keep moisture away and pasted the covers and the endpapers.  I cased in the book, carefully aligning the book block and put it in the nipping press, making sure that I had the grooves carefully placed.  Blotters were then placed between the covers and the text block and book was left to dry under weights. The blotters were changed every half hour or so while I continued repairs on the other book.

This book will never be particularly strong, but it is functional again.  The covers open and the pages turn.

Fused Glass - Revisited

From this

to this:

and this 



to this:

I got back my plate and ring bowl after their final firing in the kiln.  As I mentioned in my previous post on fused glass, it takes two firings to end up with your finished product.  One to fuse the glass and one to slump the fused glass into the shape of the mold.  The two pieces above, were the results of my Beginner's class in Fused Glass with Marie-Josee Girard, a Glass Artist from Georgetown, Ontario, Canada.

Last weekend I took her Intermediate class in Fused Glass.  In this class we expanded our techniques to include mosaics, cutting circles with a circle cutter to make bowls, and working with molten glass to make our own curls and shapes for our pieces.  Unfortunately you can't manipulate glass and take pictures at the same time so you'll have to rely on my descriptions only for this part.  It was a fantastic two day class held once again at Artifacts Plus, in Petrolia, ON.

Marie, in black, is busy cutting bases for us to work on, while Carolyn, the owner of the store, is working on her own project for this class.

For my bowl, I chose to use some of the glass I manipulated from its molten state and some that I had cut very small using mosaic cutters (this was before I realized that we were going to be doing mosaics as part of our next design).

The base of my bowl was a clear circle and I placed a white circle of the same dimensions on top.  The next step was to create my design.  I had decided upon vines and pink blossoms with darker centres.  I had originally wanted a black bowl but there wasn't a way to make my vines with a colour of glass that would show up on black when fused so I had to change to white.  I could have made a clear bowl but small bubbles show up more clearly (no pun intended in the clear glass and that was not the effect that I wanted).  That left me with white, since for the purpose of this class, those were the three choices we were given.

To manipulate the molten glass, Marie first prepared a clay plant pot by putting some fibre board into the bottom and then filling the pot with scraps of green and white glass, separated by a piece of clear glass.  The fibre at the bottom covered the hole but would allow the molten glass to run out of the kiln when it reached the right consistency.  The piece of clear glass would keep the two colours separate while they were melting.

The kiln was placed on scaffolding that was about seven feet high.  Marie kept track of the time and the temperature and when everything was right, she called us to the back room, donned leather gauntlets, safety glasses and armed herself with pliers and side cutters.  She then began to pull and twist the red, molten glass as it came out from the bottom of the kiln.  She would cut off pieces before they had cooled too much.  As the glass cooled, it turned darker, but it would be a while before we actually knew the exact colour of the glass.

Occasionally, a lump of glass would seem to gather speed and move quickly towards the floor.  It would thin out and leave a straight thin strand behind it.  With the pliers, we would bend and curl and loop the glass upon itself, trying to remember that it was leaving the kiln at 1500 .  There was a small window for manipulation.  My problem was my bifocals.  With the added difficult of using them through safety glasses, I had difficulty wielding the pliers and cutters.  My depth perception was off and I couldn't seem to get the pliers around the glass.  I so wanted to grab the glass with my gloves and bend and twist.  I just couldn't get close enough to see properly.  I did get some curves and curls that I was able to use later. 

No scraps go to waste.  Everything can be saved and used up later or pounded down to make your own fritz (which is a powder or crystal that is used in decoration).  At any rate, the curves and curls that I made became my vines in my plate design.

You can see the thin curved strands that make up the vines and the small, irregular, opaque pink and transparent plum pieces that make up the blossoms.  These are tacked to the white base with a gel glue. and then put into the kiln for the first firing to be fused.

You can see that the irregular pieces have softened and the shapes look more blossom like.  The curved pieces that were three dimensional, softened also and became thicker.

The next step is for this piece to be place on the mold and to be slumped into the shape of the bowl.  My hope is that most of the pattern will be around the side of the bowl with a bit starting in the centre and running to the upper edge.  You really can't tell until the firing is complete.

Here is the raw state of my small mosaic project.  This will be a small plate.

The extra spaces are filled with clear glass.

The next picture is the raw state of my 9"x9" plate.  It is a white base with a clear top which should give depth to the finished design.  I've used glass confetti to make my leaves which should give a lacy, transparent effect (I hope).

If you notice the small, green cabochons on the stems.  They originally looked like the picture below before they were lightly fired so that they would round at the edges.  The tool shown is the mosaic cutter.

My green circles are those pale, green shards of glass.  Amazing, isn't it?

Enough for now.

Abstract Texture Painting -- The Final Version

Several posts ago, I showed you the blank textured canvas that I prepared using Dap Dry Dex.  Well, now I want to show you what happened to that canvas.  I'm not very good at taking pictures of intermediate steps.  I get caught up in the painting and I definitely get very messy while I'm at it so I'll just have to explain what went on.

I added some drywall webbing tape to the canvas to add to the crosshatching that I'd done to certain areas.  This made the lines stand out in greater relief.

I gave the whole canvas a sponge coat of an off white acrylic paint called Tailor's Chalk.  It's a cool white that heads a little to the taupe side.  I chose that because I was going to use a hammered bronze spray paint in a drip technique and from previous experience I knew the finished colour was a taupe tone.  I was also going to experiment with some fluid acrylic in a teal/turquoise colour and a metallic aluminum.

After the base coat was dry.  I placed my canvas in my spray box (a large cardboard box that I saved for the purpose since I need to spray inside the house) and gave the heavily textured centre part of the canvas a heavy overspray that would drip down the canvas.  I let this dry as well. 

The next step was to lightly dilute the teal fluid acrylic and pour it in a line across the canvas while it was flat on my table and then stand the canvas upright to allow it to flow down the canvas.  I don't think I diluted the teal sufficiently because it didn't flow as I anticipated and I needed to help it with a brush.  Either that or my texture was too deep.  Either way, I wasn't satisfied with the result.  I ended up with too much teal in some areas and not enough in others.  I ended up using a paint brush to fill in some of the textured areas with the teal.  I had to respray the bronze over the areas of too much teal and that left me with more drips than I really wanted in some areas.

I used a gloss black lacquer enamel and a fine paint brush to highlight the ridges of the textured areas on the centre part of the canvas.  This made it look like the teal colour was pooling in the depressions.  I then added some metallic aluminum to other smaller depressions in a random manner.  Since the teal was a matte medium, a used a high gloss varnish on the teal areas so that the centre of the canvas had a uniform sheen on all the painted areas.

On the lower section of the canvas, I used some of the aluminum metallic paint to paint out the extra bronze drip lines and blend them into the base of the canvas.  I also sponged some of the Tailor's Chalk white to highlight the lower middle of the canvas and blend it softly into the background colours.

Overall, for my first textured painting, I'm pleased with the effect I've created.  It isn't exactly what I envisioned but I've learned as I've gone along which is the whole purpose of experimentation.  It will have a place of honour in the downstairs bathroom which isn't really a commentary on it's worth (I hope).

One World One Heart Winner

The Blog Hopping event is over and I must say it was a marathon!  It was well worth it, though.  I've never seen so many absolutely amazing blogs and I never would have found them if it hadn't been for this event.  I'm only sorry that I came upon in its last year, though I can see what a huge undertaking it's been for its founder, Lisa Swifka.  All I can say is THANK YOU FOR THE INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE.

I have a long list of blogs that I have to go back and explore more fully.  At first I took my time and browsed and then I realized that if I wanted to visit them all or even most I wouldn't be able to look at more than a page or two. I saw blogs that were wonderfully designed and blogs that showcased incredible talent; blogs full of witty commentary, helpful tutorials and inspiring creations.  There were even fellow newbie blogs like mine which were just reassuring (which is a good thing).

And now to the big announcement:
Drumroll please ......
The winner of my giveaway is:

Michelle from Que Bella, One World One Heart participant 598 from Kentucky, USA.  I've emailed Michelle and when her mailing particulars arrive, the journal will be winging it's way to her with my best wishes.

Fused Glass

I just spent a wonderful day at ArtifactsPlus, a new art supply store in Petrolia, ON with Marie-Josée Girard, a glass artist from Georgetown, ON. Through ArtifactsPlus, she was offering a Beginner's Workshop in fused glass.  I've dabbled in the past in stained glass at the copper foil level and enjoyed that but I've never gone beyond in my interest in glass work.

I've often been tempted by things I've seen on the Internet but classes and workshops have never come my way until now.  This workshop with Marie was a great introduction. 

She explained that fused glass is made by layering or stacking thin sheets of coloured glass to create patterns or images.  A clear sheet of glass is always used as the base layer.  The completed stack of glass is placed into a kiln to be fused by heating it through a programmed series of increases in temperature (ramps) and (soaks) holding the temperature at certain points until the separate pieces of glass begin to fuse together (between 1400ºF and 1500ºF).

Once fused, the glass is cooled at a programmed rate, quickly through 1500ºF to 1000ºF so it doesn't lose its shine and more slowly through the lower temperatures.  A full cycle in the kiln can take 12 to 24 hours depending on the size and thickness of the piece(s) being fired.

We also learned that all glass is not compatible when it comes to fusing.  The glass we were using was coded system 96.  The other major classification is system 90.  Marie uses system 96 exclusively for all her work and is happy with the wide colour range.  System 96 glass when fused at high temperatures and cooled and soaked (held) at 960ºF begins to form a very strong bond (this is what will provide the strength for the piece).   For system 90 glass, this temperature comes at 1000ºF.  This difference in temperature point is why the two types of glass should not be mixed.

We received that technical information in small pieces throughout the day, complete with visual examples that Marie brought along.

When it came to designing our pieces we learned that it was going to be a two stage process.  We were going to pick out a slump mold that was going to determine the size and shape of our piece.  We would be doing a small ring dish and a larger piece.  Colour choices would be up to us. 

Marie showed us a wide range of samples using clear, white and black backgrounds and the effects that other colours had upon them.  We had a wide choice of opaque and transparent sheet glass (system 96) colours to choose from.  We also had glass stringers, which were the thickness of pencil leads; glass noodles, which were like fettuccine noodles; pebbles, which were like blueberry sized blobs and confetti, which were like very thin flakes of glass.

Our base of clear glass had to be cut to the size of our mold. If it was too large, when it was heated it would melt over the side of the mold and stick to it.  It had to be just the right size to sit on top of the mold so that when heated it would slump into the mold and take its shape.  (I forgot to take a picture of my mold).

We used our stained glass cutters to cut out our shapes and prepare our designs after we sketched them on paper.  Because we are layering glass, we had to be careful that we didn't make the edges of the glass too thick or it would spread.  Glass has a memory and it wants to be about 6mm thick.  We wanted our layers of glass to add up to approximately 6mm.  If it was going to be more than 6mm high, we wanted it to be more towards the middle than near the edge since the molds all had a dip in them.

After cutting, the pieces of glass were all cleaned with Windex and lightly tacked in place with a gel glue (just so the pieces won't slide while moving them to the kiln).  They are then fired to fuse all the layers into one piece.

The glass is then removed from the kiln and placed on the mold and fired again to get its shape.  The firing schedule is different because the glass no longer needs to be fused, it just needs to be shaped.

Here is my small project.   It's 3" x 3".  It's going to be a ring dish when it's been fired in its slump mold.  It's in the kiln for its first firing to be fused.

The small black lines are the stringers.

This is 8" x 8" and will be a raised plate shape when it is finished.  I'll post pictures when they are completed.

Here is the small kiln (more jewellery sized)

Here is the large kiln with the class projects in it.

ATC

ATCs or Artist Trading Cards have been a popular art medium for a number of years now.  I've dabbled with various techniques over the years and participated in numerous swaps.  In fact, I would have to say it was my interest in ATCs that got me started with online swapping and online classes.  They were really the beginning of my fascination with the wonderful world of art on the internet.

Before I heard about ATCs from a member of a support group I was attending, all my art instruction was trial and error or through the occasional PBS broadcast or book from the library.  When I heard about ATCs and at the same time, visual journals, I was intrigued. 

The library didn't have any books on the subject so this led me to the internet to research the topic.  And the rest, as they say, was history.  From that moment on I was deep in a world of techniques, challenges and swaps with fellow enthusiasts from around the world.  Aside from specific limitations of a challenge the only rules of ATCs were the dimensions 2.5" x 3.5" or the dimensions of a typical trading card.

Most groups that I joined were tolerant and encouraging to beginners.  I did bump into a few groups with members who couldn't seem to remember their own humble beginnings but on the whole those participants were relatively rare.  There are groups geared to all skills levels: novice, intermediate and advanced if you are willing to look for them.

I've looking over some of my older ATCs and thinking that I should get back to this art form.  I've been so involved with my books lately that I've forgotten all about it.  It's got me thinking ... 2.5" x 3.5"  would make a nice little notebook.  Hmmmm ...  an ATC book anyone?  Now all I need is an interesting theme.

Here are some of my older ATCs:


Wood veneer with ink



Texture wallpaper with marker drawing. 



Cork background with ink





Heated copper background, ink stamped image and quote.

Paper collage on Divorce theme.

Individual punched oak leaves surround drawn face. Celtic theme.

Iris in mosaic technique.

Lady of the Leaves closed.

Lady of the Leaves open.  Autumn swap.

Paper collage.

Embossed copper and ink.

Collage, texture, embossing, embellsihments.

Stamping on cork background.

Irridescent embossing on sheer fabric, ink drawing.