linenlaid&felt interview on the BEST blog

On Friday, I was the featured bookbinder on the BEST (Bookbinding Etsy Street Team) Blog. My interview (which you can read right here) touches on my formal artistic training, my study abroad experiences in Italy, some of my current work, and a little bit about my husband and our dog. I've included one of the questions from the interview below, along with some bonus photos of my handbound wedding invitations and my wedding guestbook.

Is there a book you've made that is especially important to you?

My favorite books that I've made are my wedding guestbook and my wedding invitations, which were actually little three-page handbound booklets, that I made for my July 2009 wedding.

The wedding was hosted in a 1930s Art Deco movie theater in Charleston, SC, where large murals adorn the walls. Those murals inspired my illustrations for the invitations. The first page served as the invitation to my wedding. The second page invited guests to the rehearsal dinner. The bottom portion of the third page could be detached along the perforation and was used as the reply postcard. The designs were printed on a pearlescent paper with a linen texture. I taught Tony how to stitch the Japanese stab binding, and together we made 200 of these little books.

I made my guestbook during a letterpress class that I took my last semester of college. I used a pressure printing technique to transfer a subtle lace pattern to each of the pages in different shades of blue and green. A more distinct lace pattern was used to decorate the first and last pages, on which I also printed our names and the colophon with handset type. I printed a lace pattern onto strips of darker green paper and then cut them out to make the decorative scalloped-edge guards.

If you're interested, you can see more photos from our wedding, including a photo slideshow, here.

Special thanks to fellow BEST member Hilke for putting together the interview on the BEST Blog. Read my entire interview here.