Bank-Note-Books - A Variation

Here I've Japanese Stab Bound a set of 3 Bank-Note-Books. The banknotes are, unusually, identical in size, and with the colours, I think they make a fabulous set.

Bank Note Paper - Paper No. 0006

At a local auction recently, I bought £1,500's worth of shredded £20 notes (for the sum of £20). The auctioneer looked at me as though I was mad!

I had the idea, of course, to use them as inclusions in sheets of my handmade paper. Using cotton linters as the base, and just a tiny handfull of the scraps of notes, I produced these lovely soft sheets.

Heres a view of the stack of the dozen or so sheets I've pulled so far. And a single sheet

And a close up of a part of the sheet. I'm now going to use these sheets as end papers for my Bank-Note-Books. See here for how you can swap something for one of these Bank-Note-Books, 2 or 3 sheets of my papers, and if you want, a tiny amount of these bank note scraps.

My First Overseas Swap

I completed my second swap today, and my first overseas swap. With Judy from Iowa, I swapped one of my BankNoteBooks and 3 sheets of my handmade paper: for only Judy's second ever handmade book. I'm touched, and its delightful. Its Japanese stab bound, and made from an old macoroni package, with pages cut and folded at different sizes from (I'm assuming) a brown paper bag, with the stitching incorporating bead work. I'm extremely pleased with this swap.

My Home Made Press

I thought you might like to see a picture of my very sturdy home made press. I use this for pressing wet posts of papers, and (when dry) for pressing signatures, etc, for my books. This form of construction is extremely strong, and you get a huge amount of pressuer from even the smallest 1.5 Ton bottle jack that i'm using. A very useful tool. I built it to suit the materials to hand, but it will take A4 sheets if needs be.

Peat-Pot-Paper - Paper No. 0005

Over the weekend, I was clearing out the shed and found a pack of unused peat pots. I noticed that they are cast in a shape, so decided to have a go at making paper with them. So, 2 peat pots torn up in the blender at a time, and 3 blender fulls in the tub. This let me pull 4 sheets, before i had to put another blender full of pulp in tub. The sheets formed very easily, and also couched very easily. They dry quite smooth, and appear reasonably strong.

Next step is to make patterns with seeds in. I'm thinking big sunflower seeds in patterns sandwiched between 2 sheets. Watch this space.

Paper No. 0005 8x6 in (20x15 cm)

Pulp Painting Experiments with 3 Pulps

For this experiment, the 3 pulps used were: The pulps i used for Paper No 0001 & Paper No 0002, and a pulp made from a thin black paper that came as packing in a shoe box. The pulps were blended in the mixer in the usual way, and decanted into saucepans. Then, all of these papers were made using a turkey baster, sucking up the pulp, and laying directly on the mould, with the deckle in place. The hardest part about making these papers was to ensure even pulp thickness. The water was slow to drain too, so that didn't help, and it was mainly guess work, as this was my first attempt at these type of papers. Handy tip is to have a glass of water nearby to suck into the baster between pulps to clear out the remains of the previous colour pulp.

Sunburst. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Beach Through Barred Window. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Weave. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Parallel. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

Blocks. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives Circles. 8x6in (20x15cm) No Additives

2 Handmade Paper Purchases

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Heres a couple of images of some framed papers i bought on Ebay. I've taken them from their frames to have a better look at them. .

This sheet has gold leaf? in it, is very soft, and quite thick..

This sheet has threads and silver foil in it, appears to be sized, and is partially translucent.

Both are delightful examples of the papermaking art.

Does anyone recognise them?.

My First Swap

. I completed my first swap today. With Lubna - see Looby Ruby. I swapped one of my BankNoteBooks and 3 sheets of my handmade paper:

for one of Lubna's delightfull stab bound Mini Books 4.5 x 3 in (11x7.5 cm)

If anyone else is interested in a small swap see here for details.

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Wooden Boards for Book Covers

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These are the 3 sets of boards that I was making when I used the sawdust as inclusions in Paper No. 0003. If anyone can identify the wood, please add a comment and let me know. I finished the wood with boiled linseed oil, and nothing else. I'll get round to making the rest of the book some day soon.... The boards are 6.5x8.5 in (16x22 cm).