The Poem as the Book

I'm super honored to have been encouraged by Meredith to participate in her poetry project on her blog, Half Starts & Trails Ofss.

I discuss the making of this piano-hinge book, which I made around a poem by Jenny O'Grady written in response to a painting by Melissa Van der Kaay for The Light Ekphrastic.

I've truly enjoyed Meredith's posts so far this month (including a wonderful one by her mom), so be sure to take a break and check them out.

 
I haven't been able to find a super tutorial of piano-hinge binding online, but there are several books with instructions available at the giant craft and book stores. It's fairly simple, once you get the hang of it. It's a heck of a lot easier than copic binding!You can use almost anything to bind it with: wooden skewers, toothpicks, coffee stirrers, chopsticks, straws, even sticks. My house is full of straight things I got for free around town, usually one at a time so that I don't feel like I'm actually hoarding.
And thank you to my editor Joshua, who wrote my post's intro paragraph with a better understanding of my written voice than I was managing to, and also for taking the photos of the book.

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Supplies: Core'dinations cardstocks, Southworth Résumé paper, bird punch by ekSuccess, wooden skewers (from grocery store), HP printer & ink, acetate, SCAL & Cricut, Adobe InDesign, bone folder, ZipDry glue

I put together this basic tutorial on how to "stamp" with your printer.

You can view my other piano hinge books here.

All of my mini-books are here.

Read my whole article about this book on Half Starts & Trail Offs.