I’ll be attending a small local SF convention in a week, and as there weren’t any panels on writing (my day job) that interested me, I volunteered to speak on the “Craftinomicon” panel.

It’ll be a nice change and should be a lot of fun. Mostly be a show and tell style panel, my co-panelist and I will take along some things we’ve made and a slideshow of things other people have made (Princess Leia hat, Dark Mark Illusion Scarf, etc). I’m keeping as close to a SF and convention theme as possible.

But since most of what I’ll be showing is knitting related, I needed a few examples of other crafts. Could I think of anything sf/convention related to make using bookbinding methods?

Of course I could. Of all the paraphenalia of cons that you get, I like to keep the badges. They’re small and sometimes have great artwork on them. So far I’ve just hung them on a door handle, but that just forms a tangle of strings. A display book might be better. Here’s what I came up with:

The covers are held together by one of the nicer strings from one of the badges. (Most used cheap twine.) It’s attached the same way as most con badge strings are, too.

The pages are folded into a concertina, with a fold-up base to form pockets for the badges.

It can be opened like a book, or fanned out to display the badges.

This booklet holds all the badges from 2000 – 2009. I’m tempted to make another one for the next decade, but I suppose I won’t know how many badges to allow room for until 2020. Now that’s a freaky thought…