23 Sandy Thank You Book #4 – Celebrating Sandra Kroupa's 50 Years!

Thank You Book #4 debuted last weekend at a beautiful event celebrating Sandra Kroupa and her 50 year anniversary working in the Special Collections Library at the University of Washington. Sandra is a passionate supporter of book arts and more importantly— book artists.

The tunnel book pages spell out Sandra's own words to live by, "Inspiration. Commitment. Transformation." She has sincerely inspired, shown a deep commitment to, and transformed the lives of countless book artists over the years. Through her work we all have learned to think deeper about our work and our lives—and we are better in so many ways thanks to her dedication.

Thank You Books are a series of books celebrating the first 10 years of 23 Sandy and the plan is to create 10 over the next year or so. All will be free, open-edition books, perhaps one-sheet wonders, perhaps not. But, all aimed at thanking the oh so many friends, artists, librarians, visitors and supporters of the gallery.

You can download a free PDF of the Sandra Kruopa Thank You Book here. For best results, print on 11 x 17 inch paper then follow the step-by-stop instructions to cut out and fold into the tunnel book shown below. I printed mine at Staples on 67# card stock for about a buck and they look great.

You could also reduce to fit on letter-size paper for an even smaller tunnel book. But for smaller sizes I’d recommend text weight paper instead of card stock.

This book is a tunnel book structure from Ed Hutchins. Floating around the internet I ran across a tutorial for this structure from a 1994 Paper Crafters magazine. Look for more Ed inspiration in his book, Book Dynamics. (Order your copy and get to know this superstar book artist and all-around great guy at artistbooks.com.) Ed was an early teacher and friend in my book arts world and his work continues to inspire after all these years. Thank you, Ed.

For anyone interested in collecting all of the books in this series, you can find them here. Plus, watch this blog for future releases.

Happy making,

Laura