Transformed Books, practical practice

Here's my first practical - as in working out the practicalities - draft for the transformed books project. It's very slow going, but I wanted to post proof that I am in fact working on it, for real. If you want to find out more, the original proposal is on my website, which is in my list of links.

For this one, I used book glue - the non-acid kind - to seal the outside edges of the pages before I cut into the pages. That helped a lot in keeping the pages together as I cut, but I'm still having the problem that the lower I cut, the harder it is to keep the edges clean and neat - as the handle of the knife gets down to the level of the paper, it forces me to cut at more and more of an angle. I also learned that it is a lot easier to work with the book interior when the cover is off. So my current mission is research of book making arts in general, in the hopes of finding more ideas and techniques for crafting the interior space of the books. And I'm still on the look-out for an affordable book binding press.

And yes, before you ask, I have been given permission to cut up old library books. This is one we withdrew because the cover fell off. And it generally looked like someone had dropped it into a bath tub.