The virtue of the Coptic stitch binding is that it lies flat, so it’s ideal for writing in, though it does provide a challenge if you want to use it as a photo album because there isn’t much room for the spine to expand. To see the work around for this, check out my blog post on the portfolio I made for Max Shafer.

Michele wanted a personalized first page with Colin’s name and birthday, so we worked together to decide which of my childlike lettering styles she preferred, settling finally upon a style that look like stackable wooden block letters.

The resulting book could not be more adorable!

The food place cards that I hand lettered for the shower’s dinner were too numerous to all fit across the pages, so I added an envelope for the remaining cards. That way she could swap them out with the ones displayed as she desired. For more details on the items I made for the baby shower itself, see the post Baby Shower Book, vol. I.

Michele also had a number of cards from the baby shower that she wanted to keep together, so she handed them over to me to experiment with.  She didn’t request anything further than having them combined in some way that they would store together in a decorative way. Since she already had a box for the baby shower book (again, see post Baby Shower, vol. I), I thought it might be fun to have a more decorative binding that would make even the spine part of the display appeal. I bound all of the cards together using a Coptic stitch to create a sweet little book of well wishes for her to look back on.  One of the cards was shaped as an air balloon, creating a gap right where the punch for the binding thread would go through, so I solved the problem by adding a paper insert of a coordinating color.

Traditional guest books in which attendees simply sign their name and jot down well wishes or advice are always a solid option, but I knew I could create something more dynamic that would add a little something special when Michele wanted to look back on the day. Instead of providing the expectant mother with both a guest book and a photo album, I combined the two, using an accordion style book to allow guests a fold each for notes next to which I affixed a photo of them from the event alongside photos of Michele and the event itself.

This structure was only possible because I had access to the guest list and was also serving as the event’s photographer, so I could ensure that every attendee made it into a snap and could then match faces to signatures after printing. To allow for inclusion of photos of the event and any extra snaps Michele wanted included, I designed the accordion style book to contain more folds than guests.

The book required some sort of housing after I edited, printed, and affixed the pictures using photo corners. Michele wanted the top photo tantalizingly visible, so we settled on a clear acrylic box that she could secure using some of the ribbon from the event’s decorations, turning it into a bit of shelf decor in her own home.

See the gallery below for paintings I created as take-home decor for Michele’s nursery. For the decor that I coordinated and/or made for the full event, see my blog post on planning the baby shower. See post Baby Shower Book, vol. 2-3 for more books Michele commissioned to contain memories from the baby shower.

I chose Scalar, since it seemed more receptive to video.  It took a while to adjust to the program, but by the end of things, I earned a general grasp of the tools (except for how to remove or edit embedded media—that still escapes me).

My theme was the history and contemporary use of Coptic binding.  To see how the project turned out, check it out!

The potential for non-linearly structured books in Omeka or Scalar fascinates me.  I expected to maintain my excitement for the fluidity of movement throughout the content, and I did, in large part.  However, in formulating the paths between pages and media, my brain’s habit of linear construction continually pushed against letting my thought process to move in a natural form.  The exercise was entertaining, and interrogating the codex form (while doing a write-up of THE codex form) made it doubly so.  A nagging concern remains, though, that readers might miss content—it would be a shame to miss out on that one page, that one piece of media that might engage a user not quite ready to be as excited about Coptic stitch bindings as me.  Though, that might be an argument for making each page appropriately rich with multimedia content, enough to engage readers without overwhelming them.

I experimented with the idea of various levels of reader engagement by including both image and video on only one page, including mostly technical images on anther, and including essentially just text with occasional annotations on the first.  The idea would be—once discovering which level of multimedia depth to incorporate for majority reader enjoyment—all the pages could then be somewhat consistently addressed in that way, allowing the book to feel more consistent and tailored throughout.