summer bookmaking workshop

Last week was an absolute blur. Between filing paperwork then running from the pool to the school, if you had asked me what day of the week it was I would probably have responded with "accordion book day." During summer workshops, my days of the week are distinguished by what the project is for the day. Our week's schedule was:

• Monday: mini paper bag books & baby oil and oil pastel on paper bags for our altered book covers
• Tuesday: Mini accordion watercolor books & start the altered book project
• Wednesday: Coptic binding basics
• Thursday: Black/white nature print book with rubber band/paper clip binding
• Friday: finished altered books

Every day we worked on their altered books a little more too. This group was really great and super eager to learn new things! What really surprised me was how much they enjoyed the altered book project. In some other classes that I introduced this project, it was like pulling teeth to get them to even write their name in the book. With this group, everyday they couldn't wait to break out their books, even going so far as printing out photos and bringing in their own supplies to add to their books. It was so much fun to walk around and see them playing and experimenting with their books!

I did a lot of these projects for last year's workshop, and others are from classes I taught during the school year. I didn't really get a chance to take any photos during the actual process of making them. I might do some in-depth posts about how to make some of the new projects but here are some photos from my week of bookmaking! Psst...this week is printmaking!!!

Monday: mixing baby oil and oil pastels on paper bag panels

Monday: mini paper bag notebooks

Tuesday: mini accordion watercolor books

Wednesday: Coptic binding basics

Thursday: nature printing and rubber band/paper clip binding

This day was the most messy!

Friday: altered books! This girl's altered book was really fun! She had pages of paper cut out scenes