I love paper. Every stage of bookbinding involves some kind of paper. It's a process that includes relaxed, messy stages and careful, exacting ones. It's great to go back and forth between the two kinds of relating to materials with pauses for drying in between. Making paste paper for the covers is mixing color and differently textured carriers- acrylic medium, wheat and rice flour and then experimenting with spreading it all on large pieces of paper. The end product is always a surprise!
With the next stage there is glue and more constraints- measuring, cutting, folding, wrapping and drying to complete the covers. More cutting and folding for all the signatures inside the textblock and finally sewing all the parts to make a whole.
Blank books are containers for art work. I use them for my own and enjoy making them for other artists.