NORBAG September Workshop - Judy Rishel - WORD BOOKS

In September, 2017, Judy Rishel presented a workshop demonstrating Word Books. These are books whose pages spell a whole word or name when the book is closed. Judy presented two methods of making this book: 1) using a fold over technique that has a piece of paper folded and 2) cut pages (non-fold) method where each page is separate. Judy brought some delightful samples.

Judy is talking about the Word Book "Travel" that she made

These are some samples that Judy brought. The top one is DOG complete with a dog bone for the hole in the O. Then DECLAN, LOVE, and BOOK.  BOOK was made and painted by Judy's 11 year old granddaughter.

This is a a close up picture of her TRAVEL book. If you notice, each letter is the same color but there is an outline around each letter to make the word visible

 We started with deciding on a word, cutting out the alphabet letters needed and taping them to the end of plain text weight paper. This would give us a template to put on the poster board for the final book.

Judy had a visual sample of how the first step of the template would look. 

We then took the strips and put them together so that you could easily see each letter. With a few cuts and a bit of adhesive tape, we put them together and had our template.

Taping the letters to the text weight paper and laying them out in order to have a nice layout

Once the pages are laid out, they are clipped together and cut.  Note: if we were making the folded card, we would proceed to the next step. If we were using the cut page (non-fold) method, skip the next step and go to putting the template directly on the poster board.

Once cut, we tape the strips together so that when we fold them, they will nest in the proper order

 The next thing we do is to use these as templates and transfer to the poster board we brought. This being NORBAG, some of our members made the templates first and then moved to poster board while others went directly to poster board without the all white template.

At this point, the pages are folded, nested together and bound.  The pamphlet stitch works nicely with the folded version and both versions can use punched holes, staples (covered with washi tape) or even stab binding. The pages can be decorated with almost anything. Some used decorative papers or simply different colors of poster board (or card stock). For the letters to stand out, it is best to have some kind of contrast between letters. For example, use different colors, or patterns. Another way to make the letters show up well is by having an outline of the letter.

SAMPLES WE MADE

Polka Dot?!

 Judy didn't stop there. She provided an excellent set of instructions for our workshop and then lined a table with letters for other words.

Don't forget, we have pictures of the exchange books themed as "Second Chance" on Flickr. They will be up by September 25. Have a look, they are great in color. You can find them by going to NORBAG.blogspot.com then tapping on the link in the left hand column that says "Guild Flickr Gallery."