This class is suitable for students of all abilities

This handmade book is a variation on a Seawhites' octopus book but with the addition of a sewn binding and elastic close; octopus books have extra wide pages that fold out individually.  This variation is a book structure designed by Janina, so come along and be one of the first people to ever make one!
 

You are welcome to work along during the first part of the workshop, which is the messy part! We will use acrylic paint and rubber stamps to create some Christmassy themed paper that will be used for the book covers. If you prefer, you can use a commercially printed decorative paper, rather than painting your own.
 

We will then move onto the clean part; due to the various drying times, the remainder of the workshop will not be a work-along.  The first stage will be to prepare the book cover by trimming greyboard and covering this with our decorated paper. We will add the elastic close and will use bookcloth to make the flexible spine.
 

Next we will cut the inside pages from a large sheet of 220gsm cartridge paper. Each of the pieces will be folded in on itself to make the foldout pages.  The final stage is to make the holes in the pages and the spine, and to sew the whole book together.  
 

This class will be accompanied by step by step written instructions from Janina for the book construction part.