Here are some other links

WikiHow: Just the bare facts in text form, followed by another video which shows how to create a flipbook from loose paper.

Make: Bennett showed how he made a flipbook from some video he shot.

Fliptomania: Another informational site, with products for sale, including a flipbook “kit”.

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How to make a flipbook

They were extremely popular in the early years of the 20th century, but there are some folks who are still producing them today.  In fact, they’re pretty easy to make if you’d be interested in giving it a try.  I’ll rustle up a couple of instruction links for tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s where you can learn about the history of flipbooks if you’d like!

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Flipbooks?

For my page in the Altered Book group anniversary book, I decided to do a found poem.  I’ve got an old novel called My Lady of the Fog (Ralph H Barbour, 1908) and another Russian text called Selected Stories (Daniil Kharms, 1919).  Very different from each other in feel, I decided to use one of the illustrations from Kharms’s book and do a found poem using a page from Barbour’s.

Really, I couldn’t do it the other way around: I can’t read Russian!

Here’s the instructions that I wrote two years ago for using tissue paper as a guide when creating found poems.  The step by step instructions for this new project are also available.

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Found poem page for anniversary book

Well now my friend Corinne Stubson, who teaches book arts classes and has exhibited her books in art galleries, has decided to make a very special present for everyone in the group who wants to play.  We will each be creating a book page and sending it to Corinne.  She is going to color copy all of the pages, bind them, and send them to each of us.

Piano hinge book, by Corinne Stubson

Some of the folks in the group think that Corinne should keep our originals for herself since she is doing all this work and financing the entire thing as a gift to the group.  I hope we can prevail upon her to do just that.

Some of you may remember Corinne Stubson from an artist profile that she did for me awhile ago.

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Altered Books 10 year anniversary

Yeah, ok, just drive through the alley behind a bookstore sometime, and you’ll see the “sacrilege” of hundreds of books wasted in the dumpster.  Even though schools, libraries, and bookstores are getting better and better at recycling, why not have spare books be used for art instead?

I’ve always particularly liked Brian Dettmer’s work, which is included, and you’ll find Thomas Allen there too, one we’ve talked about here recently.

Image: Brian Dettmer

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The next stage in book arts

There is a large “gallery” of many of Thomas Allen’s pieces here.  I’m not sure that this is a sanctioned site since the post doesn’t even attribute them or link to him.

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Thomas Allen’s book art photography

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Beautiful wall art by Jason Thompson

She writes: “Using pads of sticky notes, scrapbook paper and a few other supplies, I made one of these books for each of Rebecca’s classmates to celebrate the last day of Kindergarten.  It didn’t take that long, and I thought some of you might like the idea. ”

Yes, yes, yes!  And thank you very much.  Just in time for end of the year gifts.

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Sticky Note Books

As I became involved with books, I began to study their history and forms. I discovered an ancient structure called the girdle book: prayer books worn by medieval monks, lashed to their belts, their girdles, so their prayers would always be at hand. I had a different vision. My girdle books would contain new objects of devotion, new prayers, contemplations. Girdles are binders, like notebooks, places to hold and keep stories, house ideas in structures that are used to push and mold the female figure into idealized and often unreal shapes. Working with the girdle form has been a process of healing; learning to love the femaleness of my body and be comfortable in my own skin.

Alongside the girdles, other garment books also have taken shape. I began to use baby clothing because their scale is workable for books, but their significance immediately became apparent. They became receptacles for my memories of childhood: idealized vs. painful. These pieces explore issues of childhood and motherhood. My own feelings about my infertility live in work created out of toddler dresses and baby rompers. Gloves and hand-shaped drying forms comprise another body of work that explores the hand as a most basic sign of human communication- a greeting, a warning, surrender and embrace are all communicated through hand gestures.

I use the language of clothing. Frozen and stiff, the garment becomes immobile, as if the wearer evaporated, leaving a only a shell. They become places. Enclosures. Upon opening, the ghost of the missing person still remains in the echo of the garment’s frozen shape. When opened what remains are fragments, small found objects and books nestled within. They are the distilled essence of the story, the one left behind by the “person” once living there. New homes for stories I collect.

Image info (top to bottom)

Batter My Heat: A Wall Street Valentine, 2008, Girdle, Acrylic, shredding money, pins, digital printing. 20 x 25 x 15. Text by John Donne

One Heart, 2004, 14 x 17 x 9, girdle, acrylic, silk, indian hand made paper. Inset hand-shaped book, combination codex/accordion, 6 x 4 x 24 long when opened. Text by Emily Dickinson, Poem number 6, from Part One: Life

Hands of Josephus: Part 2, 2008, 10.5 x 4 x 28, altered text from Josephus: History of the Jews, beads, wire hand forms

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Book artist: Miriam Schaer

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An animated altered book!