Double-sided Frame Book

This is a book I started at my bookmaking class run by our expert teacher Annalise. It took us over the course of two classses as well as working on at home to make. It measures 10cm x 8cm on it's outer frame and 7.5cm x 5.5cm on it's inside frame. There are 9 frames back to back, making 18 frames in total.

This is the front of the book when closed. You can see the folds of mull

on the edges. I laid a torso covered in red raw silk on top of red

glittery mesh and embellished with sequins and rhinetsones.

The frames were cut from grey board (which is basically just a denser quality cardboard). This is where precise meauring and a sharp cutting blade came into play. Once all the frames were cut I covered each one with a decorative paper - in this case Annalise had kindly given us a selection of papers to use including this precious one from Venice which depicted the drawings of Leornado Da Vinci - it has drawings and script on and is quite beautiful. Covering these frames was a laborious task but once I started I just got into production line mode and a logical order to things just took over.

After covering the boards the next step took place in class and that was sandwiching the chosen material between the pairs of frames. There is a wide choice of materials that would be suitable for this, but I wouldn't recommend paper as you have to take into account the folding and opening action of this book and the wear and tear it's going to take. So a material that is flexible as well as long standing is better. You could use, mesh, net, wire mesh, calico, hessian, muslin, acetate, vellum just to mention a few. In this instance we chose mull, which a is bookbinders material - used to strengthen covers of books before the actual book cover goes on. It's a very fine mesh and is quite stiff yet soft and has the added advantage of being sheer.

This is the back of the book when closed. I made the blue

ceramic buttons from paperclay which is then fired

and becomes like porcelain.

Before we could glue our frames onto the mull we had to make ourselves spacers to put between each row and column of frames - for this we simply cut long, thin strips of card o.5cm in width, and lay them in between the rows and columns of frames. This would give the grid layout, prevent the frames from touching each other and would provide the folds when closing this book.

Now came the tricky part and that was glueing the mull to the frames. You could either work across or down and after gluing the first frame right to the edge of the mull, another frame had to be glued underneath to match it, thereby sandwiching the mull between them. This is when the spacers came into play - one spacer had to be laid horizontally under the frane and the other vertically by the frame - this would give you the position to lay your next frame in a grid formation. After laying the first pair of frames and spacers everything else just fell into place.

This is the front of the frame book open - the red torso

in the top left hand corner is the cover when closed.

You can see where the two cuts in the mull are that

provide the opening and folding of the book.

I actually made a mistake in trimming the excess mull

when the book was closed, which is why you see an

open channel. There is only meant to be a cut at

the top and bottom so that when you view the open

book the material appears as a whole piece with

only slits at the top and bottom. I'll remember next time:-)

After all the frames were glued with the mull sandwiched between them it was left to dry thoroughly before the fun part of embellishing the mull could be done. At this stage you could coordinate a theme according to whatever print or pattern your frames are covered in - for instance, I had a Leorando Da Vinci print on my frames, therefore I could've run with that theme on my frames and portray each frame with an image and words relating to that. In this case I decided not to and just made each one different.

This is the back of the book open. The bottom left corner

with the blue buttons is the back cover of the book when closed.

It was like creating a whole load of ATCs really - that's the way it felt when I was creating each one. It also occured to me that you could indeed create framed ATCs like this but separate not attached or if you did attach them in pairs or three's they'd be diptychs or triptychs. The possibilities of making this framed book and altering into something else is quite exciting and I shall be playing with those possibilities and sharing them with you all as I progress - so watch this space folks!