04 December 2009

Making a Scroll Book

Tonight I made a scroll book based on the description in Mary McCarthy's Making Books by Hand (p. 84). I used leftover scrap from my Gregorian chant paper, a chopstick for the dowel, and red ribbon. Took all of about 2 minutes--simple. The hardest part was figuring out that in the last step there is a typo, and a little bit of the ribbon should be glued to the outside of the scroll, not to ribbon! Either that or I got it completely wrong, but what I did seems to work.

The thing to do if I do this in a class with the kids is to have them decorate and write on the scroll first, leaving an inch undone where the scroll will go and making sure nothing hugely important is at the very edges.

I still don't know what I will put in it, since my belief in any kind of self-generated content is absolutely nil right now and even the thought completely paralyzes my brain, but at least I sat down and made something start to finish. I'm pleased about that.