Emerging from a Tidal Wave of Work

Fall always seems to be a crazy season for me. Considering that much of my work revolves around the school season, this makes sense, but, it also seems like everyone not on the school track is convinced  that Fall is a great time for new beginnings, new projects, new events, NEW EVERYTHING.  Well, with all this new stuff of Fall I got pretty busy and hence haven't had an opportunity to blog. So, over the next week or so I'll give you a recap of a few of the projects that I've been up to and give you a nod towards what's coming next.

First, the film. My hubby is a partner in a film company, Almond Tree Films. He and the director have collaborated on  three projects together and this new film is their fourth. Keeping it in the family, I was asked to do some prop design and costumes for the feature that started filming about 2 weeks ago. It was very tight deadline work and there's still a few more things coming up. Here's a look at one project.

The film, is inspired loosely by a Korean Folk Tale called the Woodcutter and the Nymph. They asked an illustrator, Hannah Lee,  to make a few spreads and for me to bind them into a book. Above is the finished product. It needed to have a worn appearance so after I was finished, I roughed it up a bit with some sandpaper and charcoal.

The cover has a "peek a boo" window that features the illustration on the cover page.

The  project presented quite a few challenges. I couldn't get the actual pages until 2.5 days before the book was due. I also didn't know the final dimensions of the pages until a few days before that! It made planning ahead quite the feat! The pages delivered were 8.5 x 11 with a minimal margin... that's not an easy page to bind. It would have to be stab bound and tabs were going to be necessary.

I headed to Sam Flax art store and picked up a natural unryu paper. I cut strips 11 x 2" and carefully adhered them to each individual page, as close to the illustration as a I could get, with Sobo glue.

The tabs needed to be narrow enough to not cover the images at all but wide enough to allow the page to turn smoothly once they were bound.

Here's a closer shot. I also added a folded paper spacer to add a bit more bulk under the pages so that   the cover would be the right height.

Another shot of the front window.

For the binding I chose a Noble binding stitch. The book needed to look old and worn so this added a good touch.

I wrapped the ends of the pages with the same paper I used as an end paper on the interior of the covers. This gives a cleaner appearance and also protects the individual pages.

Well, that's one project. I'll share another tomorrow!