I think I must be nuts…

My current Travelling Doll visitor is tiny…as in very small…as in not large. At all. And my bright idea for putting my personal touches on this feller? Make him a travel journal. I mean, he’s become an adventurer, with adventuring type clothing and all, so obviously he needs a travel journal to keep track of his adventures. Right?

Here's the little guy "holding" a book that I digitally added to the pic.

Except my ability to eyeball and estimate size is sadly wanting. I thought I’d be working a little larger, you know, a couple of inches maybe (hey, track with me here…I already mentioned that my ability to judge sizes is lacking). Two inches is small but not miniscule. And I figure I could hand carve something on a cover that size.

Until I started actually preparing to make the book and measuring little Pierre to see what would be in scale. Did I mention that Pierre is tiny? Yep. The size that looks most appropriate for a travel journal? It measures 3/4″ x 1″ which is small. I’m not clear at all how I’m going to do hand carving on a book this small or what kind of design I can do that would even be discernable at such a size. But, I confess I’m thinking of something that looks like an old style world map. Yep, I’m definitely nuts.

The length is right at 1 inch. I used some tea stained Arches Text Wove scraps from another regular size journal project I did previously.

The width is about 3/4" so the size of the book is actually going to be just under 1" x just over 1"

So, I’m making two books (just in case, plus I can do a different design on the second book and drop it in my Etsy store). I have quite a few lengths of scrap paper, tea-stained Arches Text Wove, from a human-sized journal I did before. These measure at around 1 1/2″ x 19″ so one strip made almost six signatures. I ended up using another quarter of a strip to finish up the last signature and prep some end papers. Each book has three signatures of 16 pages each giving them a total of 48 pages each.

See the pencil at the bottom?

The top four papers are the endsheets. The gold/brown bits are the “boards” and below them are the two text blocks. The boards are made from a thick, acid-free gold cardstock that I have. I laminated two pieces together so it would be stiffer and then cut it down to size (slightly larger than the size of the text block). I have enough laminated cardstock to do several dozen more, I guess.

Haven’t started on the leather yet but I have some skiver that I bought from an online miniature tack company (Rio Rondo Enterprises) and it’s really nice. All veg-tanned, I got a few pieces of natural, a couple of browns and a couple of blacks. I’m looking forward to working with it and may see about ordering a larger piece of the natural next time. The brown is a bit dark for my taste but I know I’ll find something I can use it for.

Tags: ADO, art dolls, Bookbinding, full-leather binding, hand bookbinding, hand carving leather, handbound journal, leather, miniature journal, miniatures, travel journal, traveling doll project