Our Bookmaking Project

For the past couple of wintry months, as our class has been somewhat confined to the indoors, we thought a book/paper making project would be a hands-on way of teaching this Eco-Art class about recycling. Salvaging old paper that would otherwise have been thrown out from classrooms around the school, the students were able to recycle and make the beautiful handmade pieces you can see in this book. The girls created from scrap cloth and pressed flowers the unique covers below, and then bound all of the materials together by sewing up the spines of their books with dental floss (a cheap and readily available alternative to other waxed threads used for book-binding!) The finished books are seen here...but read on for the students' account of how to make your own recycled journal.

As a side anecdote, there was much fun to be had with the leftover pieces of cloth that we used to make the covers. As the class is made up predominantly of girls, I anticipated the desire for 'dress up' with the material. I did not however anticipate the plots of their pretend games to center around the theme of 'zombie queen wars'...wish I'd gotten some images of these interactions. They were very entertaining.