Marbling and Mini Book Workshop was fun!

It is so gratifying to teach. Spending the day with fun, creative people is one of my very favorite things to do.

This past weekend I taught a marbling and miniature bookbinding class to a great group of talented and inspiring women.

The first day we started by painting our books' pages with watercolors. Just simple paintings or brush strokes. It was a nice way to loosen up and to chat and get to know one another.

Then we nested our pages into an accordion (we folded the accordions using Hedi Kyle's fool-proof method that keeps it straight). Then we sewed the textblock using a binding I learned from Dolph Smith at PBI in 2008. The binding utilizes tapes made from folded pieces of book cloth-a great way to use up scraps. A simple, but elegant long stitch. The tapes are hidden in channels in the cover.

On day two we marbled paper. It's a wonderful, instant-gratification process. Everyone did pale designs at first, but as they got bolder with their paint application, their papers got bolder too, with bright, lovely designs.

Before the day was over we glued our marbled papers to our covers and WOW! what a great photo op that was! Our little books measure 3" x 3" each. Many thanks to Chele Shepard for her great photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cshepard/4359932120/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cshepard/4359198035/

So I must say thank you to the Seattle Center for Book Arts. What a pleasure it is to work with them. http://www.seattlebookarts.org/classes-and-events/scba

And a big thank you goes to the students. You all inspire me!