Letterboxing and Book Binding

Today Astro D, rubberpeace and I spent some time in Albuquerque. The main reason for the trip was to attend a class at Papers. The class was to learn how to make a wire bound book. But we decided to do some letterboxing first. I had found most of the boxes on recent trips to Albuquerque, so I was pretty much along just for the ride and that was okay with me. So we stopped at Sandia Casino and the Albuquerque Balloon Museum so that they could find a couple of drive by boxes. Both stops were pretty quick. The next stop was at Tingley Beach to find a recently planted box. This was a box that I hadn't found yet. So we parked and followed the directions. It turned out to be a pretty easy find and a nice box. The box was related to porcupines in trees. We looked for a little while but never saw a porcupine. There were a couple of other boxes in the area that rubberpeace hadn't gotten yet so we went with her to find these. While she stamped in I walked around and took a few pictures and enjoyed the wonderful Fall colors in the bosque. It was beautiful with all the golden trees.

We left the bosque and headed to the Fair Grounds for a box. Unfortunately we didn't find it. Well I found it back in September but Astro D and rubberpeace hadn't. It was no where to be found so we moved on. We made our last stop at UNM. rubberpeace was looking for two boxes on the campus. I let her and Astro D go for the first box while I checked on a box that I have hidden on the campus. My Koi Fish box is hidden near the duck pond and I recently received a note that the logbook was full. I had forgotten about that note until Astro D said we should make a stop there. Well the logbook is pretty full but there are still the backs of some of the pages that can be stamped on. So I decided that I would make another logbook and change it later. I then went to meet the gals - they were done with the first box so we all headed to the next one. rubberpeace found the box and stamped in. Now that we were done here we decided it was time to get some dinner. We ate at Flying Star and had a nice relaxing dinner.

Then it was time to go to the class. I really enjoyed learning how to make this wire bound book. We made a five page book. The quick version of how we did this is as follows. We took five pieces of mat board and glued strips of paper folded in half and with three holes punched in each strip to each side of the mat board with a piece of wire inserted in the paper. We sewed the pages together through the holes and around the wires. I love this type of book and I felt that it was pretty easy to make. I had a terrific time today and the best part is we are going to do it all again next Sunday when we take another class at Papers.