Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Bandelier Journals and Kits

Back in the early 90s a friend and I would prowl the stationery stores in Manhattan looking for interesting journals and papers. We would often see the Bandelier Environmental Papers journals and kits; the company came out of Santa Fe, NM and the paper was recycled and acid free, quite impressive back in the day. Bandelier also sold kits to make your own journals, photobooks, and notepads. The kits came with glue, chipboard for the covers, the paper journal, and cloth for the covers--enough to make two journals. They were a lot of fun, albeit slightly messy and frustrating if you got bubbles in the paper as you glued it to the front and back covers.

These are journals I made back in early 1996 from one of the Bandelier kits. The journal on the left above is a remnant from some throw pillows I made (I did a lot of sewing back then). The right is one of the pieces of cloth that came with the kit. Bandelier did a lot of those "sun, moon, stars" themes for their journals and photobooks. The paper is quite nice, I'm guessing 80 gsm. It's thick, takes color well, and there is no bleed through. My only quibble is that I'm not fond of blank paper. Anyway, I've looked in stores an online and can't find the Bandelier brand. So the company may not have survived, which would be a pity as the kits were a lot of fun.

1 comment:

  1. Found one of these kits at a yardsale last fall and just finished putting the two journals together! Great fun! Photos at cathytyler.wordpress.com I was looking for a source for another kit and found your post - guess they're not around any more.

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