PianoHinge_Fr&Bk

  

ID: Piano Hinge Book "Gems of Wisdom"


Journal only: approx 4"w x 5.5"h x 1.75" thk.

Bamboo skewers are 10" h


This is my first piano hinge book. Love the look and was fun to make but did have its frustrations. The spine area is thicker than I would have liked and that is in direct relationship to the thickness of the vertical skewers and of course the number of signatures. Next time I'll try using Mizuhiki Cord which is a lot thinner.

I used the visual instructions (rather than reading) from Book Arts - Beautiful Bindings for Handmade Books by Mary Kaye Seckler. There were a couple things I changed, the size and when doing my construction.

I started out by cutting my signatures from Grumbacher's Parchment for Calligraphy 8.5 x 11" pad.  I cut this in half and folded each in half, giving me my one signature of 2 pages (I made 10 signatures). I made a paper template of the spine width and length, and then used my Krylon gold and silver leafing pens to color in that section only of the front section of several signatures. I kept some the original color of the paper, so when everything was put together I would mimic the checker board pattern of the covers.

I then cut out my covers from some mat board, cutting it about 1/4" larger on three sides. I cut out 2 pieces of some nice Oriental paper in a checker board pattern of gold, silver and beige, large enough to cover the outside and inside and include the piano hinge section. I reinforced the hinge area of these two papers with some Linen book tape on the wrong side of the paper. Glued everything down without gluing my hinge area.

 I put my bamboo skewers in a container with some dirty concentrated Twinkles H2o water, then in a container of walnut ink. Dried them well and spray coated them with Crystal Clear.

I'm ready to put my book together. I attached my first signature to my back cover using the threads (this is different than the book) I'll use for weaving around my skewers. I used 2 of each, a gold, & a silver metallic embroidery thread & gold Mizuhiki cord. My next 8 signatures I attached with skewers. I then wove my threads around the skewers on top and on the bottom and threaded the bottom threads through my 10th (last) signature attaching it to the cover and meeting the threads on the top. Tied everything off. Attached various beads (glass heart, and other rounded rectangle glass beads, amber beads, silver round beads, wood beads, a very large seed pod, flat beads and an elephant bead) to the metallic embroidery threads and made circular patterns with the Mizuhiki cord and glued them to the cover adding large colored  rhinestones in each center. On the tips of half the skewers I also attached some beads, a gold star face bead (from Quietfire Design) and variegated stone beads (these tips are sharp which is why I added these beads)

Used my thermal embossing technique for the words "Gems of Wisdom" in a double embossing technique. Once with gold embossing powder and then edging it with copper embossing powder, not allowing the gold to melt, so there are two distinct colors.

PianoHinge_Cover

PianoHinge_CoverDetail

PianoHinge_Spine     PianoHinge_Inside

Spine detail & Inside detail of skewers through page hinges

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