Explore the Festival’s overarching theme of Repair through the art of junk journaling: transforming discarded ephemera into beautiful books. This hands-on workshop with bookbinder Rachel Hazell invites you to engage in mindful making through collage. Materials are provided, though you’re invited to bring your own ‘found handwriting’ (from crumpled shopping lists to old birthday cards) allowing you to uncover new personal stories from within their recycled fragments
00:00Hello, I'm Rachel Hazel, also known as the Travelling Book Finder, and I'm really excited to be teaching some workshops at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this August.
00:09The theme is repair, and so we have specially put together a workshop that involves recycling, reusing and restoring your personal confidence in being creative.
00:24So I've got a few things here, a few books to cut up, it's a bit sacrilegious, but this is an old storybook.
00:36The paper's quite acidic, so I think it's not very right on, so it's not something that you would read to a child these days.
00:45And I've got a map that I'm going to repurpose, and some postcards from Paris, where I teach a workshop every year.
00:55It's called Love Letters, and so we go and collect, gather up lots of ephemera from flea markets and amazing boutiques,
01:03and create a book of envelopes with lots of special, very personal letters in.
01:08And this is also a book that I've picked up in the flea market there, it's got these lovely marbled edges, but no covers, it's not going to be read again.
01:19So I'm going to repurpose it, get a few pages to use in my book.
01:25And I've got an old calendar that's got, that's, you know, unfortunately, but 2023 is gone, so I might use a little bit of this paper.
01:38And so one of the themes of the festival being repair, we want to, you know, maybe it's a little bit of a big claim,
01:50but repair the planet by doing a bit of recycling and upcycling, so instead of buying new paper,
01:56we're going to be using repurposed papers, but also this lovely stuff here is called flat white,
02:03because it's made out of recycled coffee cups, which I absolutely love.
02:07So that, this might be the basis of, um, of a cover.
02:13I'm going to cut it to size.
02:15I'm thinking how nice it would be to have a very small book.
02:20So, just folding the piece of paper in half, I'll talk to, um, people who come about grain direction
02:31and different techniques to do, but, uh, all you need to know, if you're lucky enough to get a ticket,
02:38then, um, please can you bring some old papers that you've got around you?
02:43Um, have you ever noticed how lovely the text is, or the pattern is inside, you know,
02:49you get your bank statement and you, you've got a little window that you can use, uh, in your,
02:55in your book and also the amazing patterns that are the security print on the inside of envelopes.
03:01So we'll be just turning things inside out and making use of that.
03:05So please do bring papers along if you have them and any, any flyers,
03:10there might be a few of those around at the festival.
03:13Um, uh, yeah, any old bits, bits of paper, they can be really precious to you.
03:18There can be bits of shopping lists.
03:19There can be, um, menus that you've kept or, you know, any, anything you'd like to bring.
03:24So here I've got my strip and I'm going to make a, so this is going to be the height of my book.
03:32So I want to start making, getting some papers that are the same, same height.
03:38And I'm not very, I'm not very into measuring.
03:42I'm going to measure from the book rather than going, saying, oh, this book is going to be
03:47seven centimeters and three millimeters high.
03:51So there we go.
03:53That's, that's a nice little, because the joy of making a junk journal is that, um,
04:00if it's got a crease in it, then you can incorporate it into your book.
04:04So I'm just going to spend a little time.
04:08Is that going to be the right height?
04:10Very nearly.
04:11Do I say I put those over the top?
04:13Not really.
04:16Um, sorry.
04:19I'm not, I'm not speed doing this bit.
04:26I think that's also the joy of it.
04:27We're not going to be in a hurry.
04:29We've got two whole hours to prepare our pages and talk a bit and think a little bit about
04:36the book we want to make.
04:37So I'm, you know, very quickly just giving you a little idea of the, how we're going to bring
04:47things together, um, because we have a little pocket in here.
04:53See, this is a little bit too high.
04:56I mean, a little bit.
04:57But what I'm going to do is fold this bit up so that when I fold it in half and sew it into
05:07the book, which I can do, I can incorporate this bit as well.
05:12So, you know, you can build up the pages, which is really lovely.
05:19So you can just incorporate all sorts of different things.
05:22I'm going to start to create the spine piece so that you're not just looking at a flat piece
05:28of paper and thinking, why is she doing this?
05:31That probably doesn't make any sense.
05:33Um, so I'm going to fold off center.
05:35I'm creating a little, and then I'm going to fold off center at the other end.
05:45See, I've got a nice little box ply, box spine.
05:50Um, so now I've got some, I've creased to fold, so it's so into me.
06:01And if you were worried about, oh, you know, I'm not a book binder, I don't know what I'm
06:04doing, um, we're going to use the brilliant three-hole pamphlet stitch, which is really,
06:11really genius.
06:12It's really, really strong.
06:13It makes the book function beautifully.
06:16And it's incredibly simple.
06:17But we're going to, um, put it together.
06:20So you're not going to do just one.
06:21We're going to do three.
06:23So it looks quite a complex thing, but it's actually a composite binding.
06:27Um, we're going to use some funky orange thread, because why not?
06:32I think I've got some I prepared earlier.
06:35Love that.
06:35Here we go.
06:37So we'll have that slightly tidier desk for the, for the festival, I promise.
06:45So I'm going to have, uh, three holes, which I'm going to pre-prick.
06:52This is a special book binding needle, but you can use any kind of needle that you've
06:56got.
06:57And we're using linen thread, because it's just lovely.
07:00And we're going to have a pop of colour, uh, because we can.
07:04So here we go.
07:07I'm going to make three holes.
07:09I don't know quite how this is going to work, hold all together.
07:12And we're going to sew from the outside, holding onto here.
07:29Never quite works very well when you're doing a demonstration.
07:40We've got a long stitch down the spine, tail on one side, and hopefully I'm going to find
07:57the middle, and then tie a knot to seal it up.
08:12I'll have my scissors on it.
08:14And I'm going to leave my tails slightly long so that you've got a little bit of a pattern.
08:22So that's the first little thing, and then we're going to, we're going to just carry on
08:27building up, um, other, the other sections by collecting different pages together.
08:35And I hope that's a bit of a hint about what we're going to do.
