Not too far from our old house is a large building with the words, “Denver Bookbinding Company” on the side. I’d always wondered what they did exactly, and I noticed that there was smaller lettering that advertised classes.  As we drove by one day, I mentioned to Eric, “Hey, if you ever wanted to get me a present, you could buy me a class there.”

Next week, I get a certificate for a paper marbling class! Good husband.

I showed up a bit early to the class, which I was so glad I did.  It is SO COOL in there. They have so many unique, vintage bookbinding machines and presses.

Big old book press

letters

More cases of old letters. I just loved these

Old phone books, used for weights. I love how small the Seattle phone book is.

Book stitching machine

The class itself was so fun. Paper marbling works like so:

You have a specially made bath and float pigments on top

Then, you swirl and comb them into cool patterns

Then, you lay a piece of prepared paper onto the surface, and when you pull it up,

You have this beautiful, gorgeous marbled paper!

Here’s a few others I made

And my personal favorite

There are so many actual patterns and techniques out there to get very specific marble designs, which take a lot of skill and talent to do. I also learned that it’s an international craft-with differences in European and Japanese designs, for example.

The class was great-I hope to take an actual bookbinding class there someday.  Maybe I can use one of these gorgeous papers for endpapers in a homemade journal-how pretty would that be?

Here’s what I ended up with at the end of the day-now I need to think of creative ways to use them!