More meandering

I enjoyed making my meander book and filling it with treasures.  But I think I can go further with this idea.  The construction of the book itself with its seven pockets gives the possibility of several surface designs.  My first one was constructed from a piece of marbled paper I had made many years ago, and represents the full page design. But the book gets its name from the meandering folds of construction.  All you need to start is a square of paper – size is unimportant, as the book is created by folding – and it is those folds which open up the design ideas.

The nearest of these squares represents the folds.  Each square is folded in half, wrong sides together, then each flap is folded back on itself so that the folded paper resembles a W in profile.  Open it up and repeat in the opposite direction.

The first square represents the cuts made, two outside ones from one direction and the middle one from the other.  If this has been done correctly the pages should fold naturally into a little “book” with lots of folds down one side.  This is the spine.  The pockets for the treasures are made using double sided sticky tape.

The decoration of this paper before the treasures are even considered is the stage I’m interested in.  Since each mini-square is a “page” in the book  there are possibilities, are there not?  The picture below demonstrates those possibilities.  The back drawing is one image covering the whole sheet, in effect that is what I did using my marbled paper.  The second one suggests one image on each mini-square.  This will probably work best if only one or two images were used.  It would look great if designs influenced by those wonderfully intricate tiles found in mosques were created, or, nearer home, medieval floor tiles, perhaps.  The orientation of each mini-square needs thinking about!  But I am going for option three.  Here the design is a continuous flow weaving its way round the cuts which help to form the book.  I’m going to design a dragon.  It’s going to take time so don’t look for a quick result!