I’m shaking things up a bit with my bookbinding and trying some new things. I’ve been inspired by some of the work Dennis Yuen has done with exposed bindings on hardcover journals, but I haven’t done any long stitch bindings in quite a while (since summer 2006, apparently), so I’m practicing, and my first result is the Running with Scissors journal.

In the interest of using up my existing stash, the pages are lightweight Mohawk Superfine paper that I don’t like much but I bought 100 sheets of (the perils of online shopping). The cover was salvaged from a Jay Ryan print that had been damaged too badly during shipping to frame. (Jay and crew are so nice, they sent me replacements for the damaged posters and didn’t want the damaged ones back, but I couldn’t bear to throw them away.) The pages are sewn to the spine using the classic Long Stitch and Kettle Stitch binding from Keith Smith’s Non-Adhesive Binding book (always an inspiration). Some of my long stitches on the first section are a bit loose, and the book was too narrow to show the link stitches off, but I enjoyed making it.

The inside covers are the exciting part of this journal. Since the cover is folded over, the bear’s ear shows on the inside front, and part of his leg and sock on the inside back. (That’s all it is—the bear’s ear. Anything else you might see is strictly your own interpretation.)

You can see the whole photo set in my bookbinding set on Flickr.