Long time no blog!
Very sorry about that, been a tad busy.
So, a few of you may have picked up on the fact we've had some building work done, it began on the 18th January 2017 and ended the middle of May 'ish'. How ever, the redecorating is taking a little while longer. As with all builds little snags rear up and then because the builders have moved on the next job it's a bit of a mare getting them to come back and sort those pesky snags out.
We now only have one "Snag" outstanding, Yeah!
Upstairs spare room was painted Wednesday and Carpet for Master bedroom and spare room is coming a week on Thursday. Upstairs will then be complete. Downstairs next, no holidays for us this year.
Boring stuff over, back to the fun stuff.
I like to make a book occasionally, I love the example by Megan Winn of a small leather book with a key to act as a fastener and having finished painting another room, I had a need to make something. That something being the in the form of a book that can double up as a record of what paint colours were used in which room, excellent idea.
What to use to create a base?
What better than a paint sample booklet (I have lots). One appealed to me particularly it's size, shape and quality of the booklet. I chose to use the text side instead of colour swatch side.
I began by putting holes in concertina valleys of the card, one in the middle and one either end approximately 1" from the edges. An extra hole was punched in the middle of the top ridge on either of the ends too. Torn ledger papers were glued randomly on the visible side of soon to be book. The edges were then stitched with old faithful-the sewing machine.
You can just about see the holes for stitching in the valley folds and the top peaks on the two ends.
The next bit gets a bit confusing to explain as I used a combination of binding stitches (there are lots on the internet which show you exactly how to do it step by step and one link is on the Paperartsy link above). You don't really want my version it will just put you off book binding for life. Binding complete I got out old faithful and sewed the front and back flaps down which helps secure the fastening ribbon.
Here you can see the flaps sticking up like wings prior to being stitched.
In this picture the flaps are folded in ready fro stitching.
White gesso was then smeared over the pages using my finger, this dried almost instantly and further colours were added in the same way.
I didn't want to overpower the covers and so kept them simple with only a few additions of circles and mark making with a regular pencil and stabilo pencil.
A house was stamped on book paper and coloured with watercolour pencils, this was cut out along with a couple of clouds and a few words then glued into position.
A stabilo pencil was used to add outlines to the words circles and other bits, a water pen was used to dissolve the stabilo pencil.
Sorry no pics, I'm a little out of practice.
At this point the sari ribbon used to bind the book was white chiffon and looked a bit boring, I altered this by colouring it with distress ink pickled raspberry, along with my fingers.
Mission Complete. One paint record book, just got to fill it in now.
Now the hard part linking it to the Paperartsy site, wish me luck.
Sue X
