Saturday, May 5, 2012

I haven't been happy with the last page, the Virgen de Guadalupe page. The red paper is dull, the doors don't work well, and I don't know how to do the closure on them.
I recently got a cool book at Powell's on a trip to Portland, Interactive Art Workshop by Kim Rae Nugent, and it has some fabulous ideas for how to tackle the doors and closures for this project. Normally I'd have tons of things for closures, but I'm trying to keep the book as flat as possible so it'll fit in the suitcase along with everything else. The Nugent book shows ways to do sliding doors and such, which don't require adding bulk to the book.
Here is what the Virgen page looked like mid-tear out:

There is one of the niches that is particularly large and goes close to the spine of the book. It keeps coming unstuck each time I turn the "page," so I started thinking on a solution to it. I decided to pierce holes in the block of pages to sew bookbinding thread through and hold the stack together. I used a power drill and a 1/32 drill bit to make the holes, glued the fabric-covered panel in, then used an awl to make the holes all match up. It worked pretty good, and I went back through with a gold thread to make it more decorative.
I covered the door with fabric also and attached some brass hinges. For the closure, I wanted to use a pretty green leaf button, so I used the awl to make holes through which the sew the button. Then I put a thin elastic loop on the door to go around the button.