wax paper, brown tarred paper and a vintage illustration laminated with linen thread embroidery, vintage mother-of-pearl buttons, 304 pages of white 100gsm paper (approx. 12x17,5x3cm / 4.7"x6.9"x1.2")
This is what happens when I stop thinking if anyone is willing to pay ridiculous sums for my work. I spent hours and hours sewing layers of wax and tar paper together without any idea if it was going to work or not. I'm usually so focused in matters like durability I rarely err on the side of impracticality. I'm happy I made the exception this time. Now I'm a bit obsessed with how this book will look after, say, a month's use. The surface layer is brown wax paper which, as you can see, shows every little crease and scratch (the ones on the book so far are made on purpose, though), so I imagine this book would soon turn into a pleasantly soft thing to hold if it were carried around and used on daily basis. . The reality is that this book will most likely end up sitting on a shelf with my other experiments since I don't really know what to write anymore making it pretty useless for me to own one more notebook or diary. V seemed a bit intimidated by the fragile looks of this book (telling him it's not fragile had no effect) so he's not volunteering to wear out my book for me. It's also a good thing to have some books that stay with me instead of the mere photos I'm usually left with.
The binding is a long stitch binding, a variation of Carmencho Arregui's crossed structure binding. The last time I made one of these was when I was teaching V to bind a book that wasn't case bound. Results proved that either I'm a great teacher or V isn't nearly as uncrafty as he seems. I recommend checking out the link to Arregui's website as there are tutorials for several variations, and the tutorials are crazy good so you can't go wrong even without me as a teacher.