Handmade art journal

I bought this old bird book a little while ago to turn into an art journal. I finally completed it last saturday at the Wight Craft Circles monthly crop.

I removed the pages of the book then made 4 folders, each with 6 pages, to stitch back inside. I used different types of paper, fabric, lace, old text, music sheets, maps, pages from an old stamp collectors book, old patterns, digi download images and stamps to create each page. I used lots of sewing on the pages for more texture.

I aim to paint and draw and write over each of the pre made pages. I don't know yet whether I will have a theme for the book...I am thinking inspirational quotes or just using it to write down day to day stuff.

Here are the photos.

Front and back

(I was going to decorate the outside but have decided I prefer to keep the original look of the book)

The pages

A maya road envelope stuck to the back inside cover

Ledger paper, tissue tape, downloaded images (from Ceremony) and stamps

Downloaded image and TH glassine paper

An old pattern

A pull out section, butterfly printed on tissue paper, string and old music paper

Tabs made with a tab punch from Stampin up (I think!)

Front cover

Thanks for looking,

Sam x

Binding my own Art Journal

I bought an old book from Oxfam a while a go with the intention of altaring it in some way and using the inside text pages on art journal pages.

I had intended to take the covers off the book seperately and re bind using webbing to hold it together as I had seen in the Wildfire book by L.K.Ludwig, but the only webbing I had was to big. I went on Youtube to try and find another way of doing it and found this video.

I thought this was a much easier way of doing it as it left the covers attached to the spine.

I made four signatures, each with 6 pieces of paper. I used a mixture of papers-cartridge, watercolour and coloured. (I didn't remember to start taking photos until I had bound the book, but the video shows you how to do it!) I then bound the book using the instructions in the video.

This is the spine showing the binding

This is the inside front cover

Some of the pages showing the stitching. I didn't have any waxed linen thread so I doubled up some hand quilting thread and ran it through some beeswax (left over from my quiltmaking days!).

I wanted to decorate the front cover, but not all of it, so I used masking tape to mark a square off in the centre. I then gessoed it.

I used my heat gun to dry the gesso and then covered the square with a thick layer of texture paste. I then stamped a dragonfly image into the wet paste. I used the heat gun again to dry it...which took a while!

I removed the masking tape when dry and painted the image. I used Dylusions paint and twinkling H2o's.

I found a Zutter perfect closure which I have been saving for ages(I've had it at least 4 years!). I painted the leather strap to match the book and stamped tiny dragonflys on it before attaching it to the book.

I attached the tiny key that came with it to a piece of sparkly thread and added a little gold heart and this just hangs off the strap.

And this is the inside front cover and the first page.

I am really pleased with how this book has turned out and will definately be making some more!

This is my WK 42 LO for The Wight Craft Circle Scrap with us challenge-a review of 2010. It is a straight copy of Paiges LO (which she scraplifted from someone else!) I have no mo-jo for scrapping at the moment so Paige was nice enough to let me just copy her!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Sami x