June 27th 2026 – Focus on Book Arts

Open Studio Sessions

Have you ever wanted half of a day during the conference to work at your own pace, relax, and embellish your previous day’s workshop creations? Or wanted some low-stress time to get input from an instructor (or your peers) on a project you’re working on? Join this Half-Day Hosted Studio Session for just $55, and enjoy a dedicated space to work alongside other like-minded attendees at your leisure. Then, spend the other half of the day exploring Monmouth, taking the trolley to Independence to visit the shops and galleries, visiting one of the local wineries, or joining the non-hosted open studio session after lunch.

Rosemary Rae: Festival Flag Book

Gather found type, numerals, tickets and random images! This book is an easy and fun flag book structure mounted between two hard covers. Paint the covers or cover with decorative paper. Use found typography to create a paper festival and add a bit of collage, stars, and miscellaneous ephemera and create a dynamic structure full of type and image.

Pietro Accardi: Intro to Paper Marbling

In this introductory class, students will gain a basic understanding of the history, techniques, tools, and styles of Western marbling. We will talk about the color wheel and color theory to guide students’ creativity. Pietro will demonstrate how to execute the most classic patterns and how to create simple harmonic color combinations.

Rhiannon Alpers: Layer by Layer—Stacked Boxes with Magnetic Closure

This two-day workshop is designed for intermediate boxmakers looking to deepen their skills and explore creative possibilities in structure and design. We will construct a multi-tiered interlocking tray system housed within a wrapped enclosure featuring a hidden magnetic closure, utilizing pre-cut components to streamline the build process.

Kristen Doty: Watercolor Explorations

Explore watercolor techniques and experiment with different papers/surfaces that will spark creativity and improve watercolor skills. We will delve into color theory and color mixing using a double split primary palette, also learning how to avoid “mud.” Techniques will be added together for illustration and painterly or abstract effects. Students’ exercises will be bound together in a unique but simple no-sew book for future reference.

Robin Feinman: The Art 101 Teaching Album

This workshop will focus on constructing a concertina-bound book with pairs of pages meant to illustrate or demonstrate a basic art technique or concept. The workshop is designed for participants who want to teach a book arts project to their basic art class, who would like a teaching product to show basic art concepts, or to anybody new to or familiar with the concertina binding and the basics of visual arts.

Selene Fisher: Whimsical Little Houses All in a Row

Are you charmed by the repeating shapes you see in lines of hillside houses? Are you intrigued by urban sketching? We’ll explore new neighborhoods by constructing our own little wonky row houses bound into a quirky accordion book.

Erin Fletcher: Envelope Binding

In this workshop, students will create three variations of the Envelope Binding structure. The first two will utilize handmade paper for the covers while showing solutions for binding a thin versus a thick text block. For the third model, students will explore Clara’s layering technique using dyed Tengucho and undyed Kozo tissues to create a more translucent and dynamic cover.

Brenda Gallagher: Decorating with the Heat Foil Pen

Create beautiful designs for your books with the heat foil pen. Each student will receive a brand-new heated foil pen with multiple nibs that they can take home at the end of class. Brenda will provide a rainbow of foil options for students to use in class. Students will also be invited to cut a length of each color to take home for future projects.

Helen Hiebert: Half-Day Hosted Studio Session

Genevieve Kaplan: Altered Texts—Obscuring to Reveal

In this one-day workshop, perfect for all levels, students will follow a step-by-step process to create their own small book of engaging visual-literary erasure.

Casey Newman: Indigo Dyeing Paper

In this workshop students will create and use an indigo dye vat to dye paper beautiful shades of blue. Students will learn how to create an indigo dye vat and see what depth of shade can be created through dip-dyeing paper. This technique can create both solid and layered/ombre designs. Students will learn ways to fold and bend paper to create different designs and will be able to try numerous techniques.

Shawn Sheehy: Paper Engineering Boot Camp

In Paper Engineering Boot Camp, students will build a handful of foundational paper-engineering structures—some pop-ups, some movables—that will serve as physical warm-ups and creative building blocks. Following that, students will receive a series of problem-solving prompts that will help them apply their specific idea to the foundational structures. If a student doesn’t have a specific idea but would simply like to play with pop-ups, they will find the experience to be useful and engaging.

Kris Stewart: Creating Longstitch Leather Journals

Students will learn to craft their own longstitch leather journals by hand. They will choose from a variety of precut leather from the instructor’s collection to create two beautiful longstitch journals, each highlighting different skills and techniques.

Jenn Woodward: Explorations in Hand Papermaking

Students will explore how to make pigmented paper pulp to create a full palette of colors, and how to use those wet fibers as a kind of paint. Students will learn the process for making both smooth and textured paper pulp, plus techniques for markmaking, creating shapes of color, building layered images, and retaining negative space within a composition. Students will create several wet pulp painting pieces that they will take away from the workshop to dry at home.

Roberta Lavadour: Winging it—Post-Consumer Freeform Journal

Sometimes a person just needs a book to toss into their bag to have available for notes. Sometimes they want to give someone a cool gift that isn’t too precious to actually use. This simple, sturdy structure fits the occasion and has a wide range of options for personalizing and stitching outside the lines. It’s a perfect vehicle for bringing together those fun bits of saved ephemera and for loosening up a bit between addressing more formal structures.