summer bookmaking with kids: camp tannery arts

Wishi Washi Studio welcomed about 25 kids into the studio today for a little studio visit and some bookmaking.

Every summer Linda Cover, who runs an art making studio for kids at the Tannery, runs summer art camps called Camp Tannery Arts.

Linda arranges studio visits with Tannery artists and also has some of us conduct little workshops with the kids in the visual arts, poetry, dance and music.

turkish map fold books with letterpress printed cover

 

Once again, this year I collaborated with letterpress printer Sam Amico (see last year's project here). The camp kids visited him first where they saw his press, talked about the art of letterpress printing and each printed a sheet of paper.

Then the kids came to my studio where I showed them examples of books from different times and places in the world.

covers letterpress printed by sam amico

 

Sam passed the letterpress printed covers over to me and I led the kids in a Turkish map fold making class.

These wonderful little books will be filled with maps and poetry by the end of the week.

turkish map fold books

This reminded me of how much kids really like to make books. It is a great summer project and the result is a little book for them to write and draw in.

little hands making books

There are some online classes in bookmaking with kids over at Creativebug (Turkish map fold, the house book, orizomegami and 

 Japanese side sewn are all great projects for kids) and I also have a free tutorial on making the Bamboo Rubberband book with kids over on Tinkerlab blog.

No excuses. Go make a book!