Card Exchange 2026

Several of our group members agreed to participate in our third card exchange. Each participant made a full set of cards so they could give one to each of the other participants. This exchange has no specific guidelines and everyone is free to employ whatever book arts or paper arts skills they like to use. The results include a wide range of techniques including letterpress, painting, illustration, eco printing, collage, pop-ups, stamping, paper cutting, and more.

Check out all the cards below, you can click the photos to make them larger. Some of our participants created an edition with twelve cards that are all the same and some participants made twelve unique cards, in which case only a few are shown here.

	Sally Crawford An edition of note cards made with natural dyed papers each with a handmade envelope made from a variety of original eco-printed papers.
	Marilynn Rudi An edition of cards featuring collage, stamping, and hand-lettering on the outside and a pop-up honeycomb heart on the inside.
	Barbara Dugas An edition of tri-fold cards featuring a telephone collage with mixed media elements and stamping.
	Heather Loney A set of cards featuring her own intricately hand-cut illustrations.
	Tarika Stitt An edition of handmade cards featuring painting and illustration paired with handmade envelopes.
	Larry Colwell An edition of cards featuring an underwater fishbone collage.
	Rhynn Winstead A set of cards each featuring an original ink and watercolour illustration exploring Little Red Riding Hood imagery.
	Rhonda Miller An edition of cards featuring hand-cut flora on the outside and a pop-up garden on the inside with foil-printed text.
	Julie Rosvall An edition of cards blind debossed with knit lace patterns and letterpress printed with an Ellen Glasgow quotation.
	Mallory Kinley A set of twelve unique cards each featuring an original watercolour illustration.
	Anna Roberts A set of twelve unique cards featuring a variety of found images and collage elements.
	Stephanie Morley An edition of letterpress postcards ready to send out to our local government representatives to protest recent funding cuts to arts and culture programs.
	Katie Prescott A shiny gold edition featuring found library cards overprinted with letterpress text.

Making Origami Things

At our first meeting of 2026, we got together to do some origami. We had a few different origami projects ready to share so everyone who attended was able to try all of them. Marilynn was teaching the very practical masu box with lid. Stephanie was teaching a fun origami star. Rhonda was teaching the little origami book and the iris flower and Heather was teaching the fancy little dragon. It was a nice mix of techniques and everyone had a wonderful variety of finished items. Have a look at some of the results!




Thank you to those teaching and to everyone who came out to participate!

"As Above, So Below" work by James MacSwain

Currently on display at Hermes Gallery in Halifax, is a solo exhibition of work by local artist, James MacSwain who passed away two months ago.

James MacSwain was active in the Halifax art scene since the 1970s and was well-known for his queer and art-culture activism which he expressed through short films and stop-frame animations. As an extension of his work with moving images, he collaged dynamic static images, not only as 2D collages, but also in the form of tunnel books and star books which can be viewed up and down, side to side, or round and round.
His colour palette is bold and his choice of imagery is rich. Combined with his use of structures like shadow boxes and star books and even some of his own marbled papers, James MacSwain's work is both a joyful and thoughtful visual experience.

The exhibit, "As Above, So Below" will be on display until December 21, 2025. Hermes Gallery is located at 5682 North Street in Halifax and is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays (12pm-6pm). More information can be found on the Hermes Gallery website.

Making Miniature Books

We had a fun time today making a batch of miniature books! Joe Landry and Katherine Victoria Taylor put together some great kits and brought all the necessary tools, glue, and materials so that everyone could go home with a finished little book ornament. Thank you Joe and Katherine!


We started out with this little kit, complete with candy cane. It included some beautiful chiyogami paper, blank pages for the textblock, boards, spine linings, and thread. In the end, everyone had a fancy little book suitable to be used as a holiday ornament. Great job, everybody!

Book Swap 2025

Keeping with our November tradition, a group of NSBAG participants gathered once again to swap handmade books. In this swap, everyone creates a handbound blank book and brings it to the meeting. The books are all wrapped in brown paper so we can't see the books right away. The packages are each assigned a number, then the participants each draw a number and receive the corresponding package. Finally, we open the packages and marvel at each other's wonderful work! As always, there was a wide range of techniques and materials and creativity in the books this year.

Have a closer look at each book:

Sally Crawford made her book with a variety of her own eco-dyed papers bound using a traditional Japanese sewing.

Larry Colwell made a traditional case binding, quarter cloth with marbled paper.

Tarika Stitt's book is a traditional codex with faux leather, handmade paper, hand-sewn endbands, and customized painted endpapers.

Mallory Kinley made a hardcover longstitch binding with her original watercolour illustrations for the pastedowns.

Heather Loney made a book using the Criss Cross Binding (also known as Secret Belgian Binding) technique with custom book cloth on the covers.

Rhynn Winstead made a book with custom linen bookcloth, decorative paper, hand-sewn endbands, and her original kitikate relief prints for the pastedowns.

Joe Landry's book is a Rubow millimetre binding with brown leather and marbled paper.

Stephanie Morley's book is a German case binding in full cloth with elephant paper endsheets.

Emily Brown made a full cloth case binding with embossed design and custom endpapers, design inspired by the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

Marilynn Rudi bound a journal using the reverse piano hinge binding technique with a mixture of decorative papers.

Rhonda Miller's book is a Rubow millimetre binding with purple goatskin leather and her original hand-marbled paper.

'Land'marks on Bookmarks

Informed by Nocturne 2025's theme, "ground", the Nova Scotia Book Arts Group offered visitors an opportunity to explore how the ordinary, often overlooked elements from our natural surroundings can demonstrate how Earth makes her own artistic marks. Muted, textured, gently produced, surprising.

We prepared papers by exposing them to nature. Most were buried in the ground in various locations for different lengths of time.

A wide range of earth-marked papers ready for Nocturne.
During the Nocturne event last weekend, visitors were invited to design their own bookmark using these papers we had prepared. The bookmarks were made from watercolour paper and most of them had been buried in the ground letting Earth make the initial marks. Folks were then invited to decorate their bookmarks by using natural marking tools such as sticks, feathers, or seaweed and colourants from plants such as goldenrod, tansy, and blackberries.

Natural colourants were made from tansy, goldenrod, avocado, guelder rose, and others.
Mark-making tools included feathers, seaweed, twigs, corn husks, etc.
There was great enthusiasm from all ages at the results. Had those colours and patterns really come from paper being buried in the garden? Why did that yellow flower give such a dark green hue? So, who needs paintbrushes?! Did you see how those two colours combined to make such an interesting textured result? Look how that colour changed over time! What would happen if...


A few of the bookmarks after being embellished by our visitors.
Unlike colour and texture from the commercial or manufactured world, Earth's marks have life and vibrancy and vary across the surface and are often ephemeral. They are an invitation to look deeper, to enjoy while they last, to connect more closely to the ground beneath our feet ... then ... look wide and decide how we will show care.

A glimpse of the activity during Nocturne.
Thank you to Sally Crawford for the vision for this project and for all her work making the natural colourants, collecting tools, planning the evening, and for sharing her knowledge with everyone. We began with about 200 earth-marked papers, which were prepared in various locations over the summer, thanks to Sally, Rhonda, Marilynn, and Stephanie. Also, thank you to our other helpers who came out last weekend: Emily, Tarika, Mallory, and Heather!

Katherine Victoria Taylor: A Modern Journeymanship

When someone speaks with passion about their craft, you can't help but be excited to learn more.

At our most recent NSBAG meeting, Katherine Victoria Taylor took us on her journey of becoming a letterpress printer and press mechanic, also touching on bookbinding and papermaking.

Crediting her 'apprentice' years to Joe Landry, Katherine's journey, overcoming working with intimidating large Vandercook presses, took her to workshops, internships, and artist residencies with expert letterpress printers, designers, and press mechanics in both Canada (Ontario & Nova Scotia) and the United States (Maine, Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York). Katherine spoke about the techniques she developed in press mechanics, the willingness to spend extra time learning new skills, the all-important networking to meet and work with the experts, like Paul Moxon, and bringing those skills back to Nova Scotia. She also explained that printing presses were not just for printing books, but that letterpress printing was often used in making posters with political statements.

Although the names of most of the experts that Katherine mentioned were unknown to me, I was pleased to realize that because of Katherine's networking and invitation, I also had the chance to work with one of them, Amos Paul Kennedy, a well-known letterpress printer who participated in some of the Gaspereau Press Wayzgoose days where we created statement posters.

The slide show and talk was informative, and Katherine’s excitement about letterpress printing and press mechanics was contagious.

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Submitted by Heather Loney