I'm getting close to done on this book. I did put it aside for a while and worked on a few other things, mainly because my brain needed a rest from the mental juggling that is involved in planning and preparing a book of this sort.

The first book wasn't so tricky. I did up pages and, after they were done, decided which were to be attached back-to-back and in what direction they would fold. The order was intuitive (that's an artsy word for haphazard), but seems to have worked.

This book is slightly different. there are ten pages and it'll be a coptic binding again. This time I made the covers stiffer and the pages larger. The major difference, though, is that there are windows through the pages throughout the book. Sounds cool, right?

What it actually means is that each page that has a window must be backed with a page that also has a corresponding window, reversed. Everything has to line up. The edges of the windows have to be finished in some fashion. Even more importantly, the views throught the windows have to justify the apertures and the openings have to be incorporated into the page layout, overall design and construction process. It's been…. fun. Definitely educational, but I had to take a break for a while because I was going stark raving mad trying to keep track of it all. I had gotten to the point at which each step taken entailed changing something which caused a ripple-effect throughout. What stopped me was not knowing what to do next that wouldn't cause adverse effects.

So it sat on the design boards for a while. I am now back at it and think I can finish it this week. The pieces have settled in my mind and I can now see my way again. The pictures are rotten, but you can sort of see where this is headed.

I really need to work on easier projects for a bit….