February - Flag Book

As my January books were all very conservative and traditional, I decided to go for color in February and chose a flag book. Flag books use an accordion binding with rows of pages (the flags) glued to both sides of the folded spine.  When you open it as you would a regular book, with the pleats still fairly close together, the pages - or should I say rows of pages - turn as you would expect.  As the pleats are pulled open some of the flags face the cover and some the back, depending on which side of the folds they were attached to.  Then when you pull the book out flat you see only one side of each flag.

If this all sounds confusing, try putting one of these together.  It is one of those things that sound simple, and in fact is simple, but when you are doing it there is a contant state of panic that you have glued something to the wrong side of something...and I only did that once. 

I had some wonderfully colorful paper and rather thought I would start on the book without knowing for sure what would go in it.  It doesn't make much sense to make one of these blank and I soon saw that the art or attachments really needed to be put on the flags before they were assembled.  So, I fell back on my tried and true postage stamps.  I pulled the page that had all the canceled stamps to match my colors - yes, I sort my stamps by color, doesn't everyone?



When barely opened, you can see it looks quite normal. I made a paper band to keep the book closed which simply slides off and on and covers the decoration on the front cover.

Partially opened you can see both sides of the flags.  I used more of the paper from my old stampcollecting book for the endpapers - ones with matching colors of course.



And here we are fully opened, with flags going in opposite directions.  I used only stamps with faces on the sides which would show when opened.  The other side of each flag had a stamp with a heraldic device of some sort, mostly lions.

I would like to do another flag book, but I am waiting for inspiration to strike.  As I worked on the book I realized it was the sort of book that is absolutely perfect for a few applications, but not really appropriate for most.  One of the best things about it is that is was finished on the 17th of February, so my goal of making a new book every month is so far intact.