Transcripts
1. Introduction: Everyone, and welcome to the Accordion hinged
Art Journal Workshop. If you've ever wanted
to create a unique, handcrafted journal that's just as beautiful as
it is functional, this class is for you. We'll explore the fascinating
world of bookmaking, focusing on a clever
accordion style hinge that brings your journal
pages together in a creative and
eye catching way. I'm Denise Love, an artist
and creative educator, and I'm excited to
bring you this fun and creative dive into
handmade art journals. Using watercolor paper,
decorative papers, and your choice of
a lovely cover, you'll craft an art journal
that's perfect for sketching, writing or mixed media. Whether you're an
experienced book artist or new to the craft, this workshop is designed
to inspire your creativity and leave you with
a finished piece you'll treasure. So
let's get started.
2. Class Project: Your class project,
you'll create your own Accordion
hinged art journal using the techniques
taught in this workshop. You'll select your papers
and design your cover, and then you'll construct a creative accordion style hinge to bind the pages together. By the end of class, you'll
have a fully assembled, personalized art
journal ready to use. Add your own finishing
touches to make it a truly a one of a kind and share your
creations to inspire others.
3. Supplies: This video, let's talk about the supplies that we'll
be using in class. The nice thing about
this type of book, the accordion book, here's
an older one that I made. This type of book does
not require a lot of supplies or any sewing skills
or anything like that. It's a book that's really
easy to put together, and I love it because
the pages lay flat, so it's easier to
work in and painting and do some different
things this book, I have used a handmade
paper on the cover, and then I have used some handmade watercolor paper inside the Jackson's two Rivers handmade paper because I
want to be able to paint on these and use them in my
art journal practice. Then we're going to
be using some type of extra paper between
every set of pages. That paper is basically what
holds our hinge in place, holds the little tab from sinking back out
through the paper. In this book, I've used
vintage papers and stuff. But you could very easily do something like in some of the
other books that I've made, where I've used
handmade papers and such for fun divider
pages and stuff. You could do something like
that with pretty papers. You could also do something
the vintage papers like I've done in this one or a scan and a print
of a vintage paper. If you've got some digital
papers that you've purchased, you could print those out and use those as the divider pages. On the one that I'll
be making in class, I'm actually going to make that pocket of the same
paper that I made the book, but I'm going to make it
like an actual pocket that I can then slip
a piece of art in. Every section will have a pocket with an extra piece in there. Then as I go through
and start painting, I could paint that, I
could paint that pocket. I could paint the
piece you pull out, I could paint the backside and
I can paint the next page. It's all kinds of fun art things that we
could then do in that book. I just wanted to show
you that there's some options on what you could
do there for those pages. So you might gather some
of your supplies together, and those could
include pieces of art that you've painted that
you want to use in the book. Those could be your handmade
papers. You handmade them. They could be
handmade papers that maybe you find at the
art store and I usually buy my handmade
papers at **** Blick because I can go into the store, look at them and
touch them and get excited about different
patterns that maybe they have. You'll also want a piece of bookboard which is what we make the cover
of these out of. And you can also use the
back of a sketch pad, if you've got watercolor paper, you could buy a pad of paper and make your book
out of that paper, like the Hana Mule
which we fold in half, it'd be a little half size book. You can make these
books any size. You could buy one pad of paper, and then this back
panel could be your bookboard because the
back of those sketch pads, the watercolor pads are super thick and they're
perfect for that. If you wanted to make one
book out of one pad of paper, you could buy a pad
of paper and then use that back piece as
your bookboard. And then I'm going to be
making my hinges out of my Canson XL watercolor paper because it's nice and
thick and crispy. The handmade paper is very soft and it'll
shred pretty easy. This paper doesn't shred at all. I actually have this
size pad, 12 by 18, and I also have the
bigger size pad, which is 18 by 24. Yeah, 18 by 24. Basically, I'm going to
take a strip of that, and that's going to be my spine. So any of your larger
watercolor paper, cheap watercolor paper
pads would be great. If you have a small pad and you don't want to go
buy a pad of paper, you could piece your sections together to make your spine, big piece and you'll
see what I mean when we get to making that spine piece. Then you need some
paper. So whatever paper you decide that you want
to use for your book, and so I'm going to use the handmade paper
because I don't know, I feel like in a
book, this paper actually gets a
good life for me. Like, I don't waste it
because now it's in an art book and I can do
some fun things with it, so you'll want to
pick your paper. And whatever page
paper you decide on is going to determine how big you can make those books. So if you use, say nine by
12 piece of paper, you know, fold it in half, that's going to be about the
size of that book. It's going to be
about six by nine, which is an okay size, and it's a little smaller than the size that I'm making with
the larger sheets of paper. So experiment and play. Start off making a smaller book and work up to making
bigger books if you want. I do like to paint in
the bigger books myself. That's why I'm enjoying
these larger pieces. You'll also need a glue stick. I'm using the hu or whatever glue you're
happy to be using to glue the paper onto
the bookboard. You could use the book
glue, the PVA glue. You could use
Eileen's tacky glue. You can be creative
there with your glue. You don't have to
use a specific glue. I just find the glue stick convenient because
we'll also be using that to glue in our
extra pieces there. I do like having a glue
stick. It's convenient. You don't need a bone folder and I'm using this one a lot, but I want to actually score the different folds in the accordion part that we
create, this part here. I do like having a
bone folder that's got some edges on it. You could also use a
butterknife and flip it over, not the sharp side, but the dull side
probably would be fine. But I do need something
that'll help me score the paper, but you
don't have to do that. You could fold it back and forth manually with a score
line, it's more exact. You'll also want
to have some type of double stick tape or little mini glue dots
or something because in making the book that
I made a while back, I discovered that when you're trying to glue
the paper to the tab, the tab keeps trying to pull itself out
to the back side of the book if you will stick your paper to the tab
along with some glue, then these sticky
things will hold your paper in place.
Until the glue dries. And so I found that these
are super duper helpful. I also have a utility knife and a big ruler and a cutting mat, and that's the basic
supplies that I'll be using in class today.
So let's get started.
4. Prepping Paper And Cover: First, I'm going to decide on the paper that I want to use and the size I want
to make the book, and then I'm going
to cut those pages to the right size and actually have a piece that didn't make its way
into another book, which was the size that
I'm going to go ahead and use in this
book because it's the right size and
it's the same paper. And so it's basically half
of this sheet of paper. And this sheet of
paper is about 16 " by about 20 ", 16 by 20. So my finished book ends up being about eight and a
quarter inches by 10 ". Eight by ten, basically, which is a nice size.
I like that size. All I'm going to do because
I already have this haft, I'm just going to now line
this piece up with my ruler and pull the other sheets because I want it to all be
kind of this hand torn look. And because I've already got
one just in half already, we'll just use that one to
half these other sheets. It doesn't have to be exact.
I'm not looking for perfect. I'm just looking
for interesting, hand torn in half, and we are good to go. Alright, so I've got
all my pages torn. And because this book is going
to be approximately Okay, they're not even,
but that's okay. The handmade paper is
a variety of sizes, and they're not all exact. So if you end up with
any pages that are too tall and you feel
like you need to make those even or maybe they're all too tall because
of the way I tore them, you could come back after the fact and take off another
inch if you needed to. So if you don't get it exact, don't fret about it
because it's easy to fix. I'm just going to
come back and take about an inch off of these, so it's closer in
line with the size. When you get to tearing a
little piece like this, just tear it towards your ruler, if you'll keep your hand a
little closer on the tear, you'll avoid pieces like this. But if you do that,
I simply either continue tearing it
down like you go down, or I just come back with a
pair of scissors and snip it right there and
keep on going. I just don't worry about
some of these things. Don is better than
perfect on a lot of this. But if you'll keep your
finger underneath it close to the ruler as you're going down instead of
just pulling the paper, you'll avoid getting
those great big areas like that that want
to tear funky. But you do need enough
to be able to grab. So if it's a little
tiny bit off, keep it that's interesting. If it's an inch off, then
you've got enough to grab and then go ahead and
make those the same size. So now we've got them all
closer to the same size. I don't mind a little
bit of funkiness, but I don't want them all
off. Got one last one. And then we're gonna cut we're
gonna fold these in half, and then we're
going to cut a slit right in the middle
of these because our slit is going to be where
our hinge is gonna go in. So because this is
approximately 10 ", I want the hinge on the spine to cover at
least half of that. Half of ten would be 5 ". If we look at the
one I've got here, that would put the hinge
right there in the center with about 2.5 " left
over on each side, which is nice and sturdy
for this type of book. I want to be right
in the middle. I drew a little line
on these originally. Let me just grab a pencil here. And then once you mark fold it in half and
get your center mark, and then come right here with your ruler and
you're going to mark a line that's about from the 2.5 inch mark to
the 7.5 inch mark. And then you know
you're right there in the middle because then you
have 2.5 here and 2.5 there. Then once you have that line, we can now take that line and go to all the other
sheets and draw a line. And we need that line
because we're going to cut. We're going to cut that
line on all our pieces. So actually, I could
have folded that first, but let's see if we even
got it in the center. And this is where we'll be
using our bone folder to really get those nice and bent. And then if we didn't
get in the center, I can just erase that with my eraser and come back because I'm probably going to paint on these with acrylic paint and watercolors and lots
of different stuff. Then I can actually match it up, just get it
all the way there, match it up and
then draw our line, and now we know where
to cut for that piece. I'm going to go ahead and
fold our other sheets in half and get our nice sharp
fold with my bone folder. I'm working with
a handmade paper. So it's 100% cotton,
it's very soft. So it may not be
as crisp as, say, if you've got arches or a
Hnomul watercolor paper, but I'm okay with that. That is the fun and the
beauty of the handmade paper. I'm going to go ahead
and mark and cut all these. All right. Once we've got our line in
the middle of all of these, I'm going to set my
original over here, and we're just going to take
a ruler and a utility knife, and we're going to now cut that slit in
each of these pages. I'm just going to very carefully follow that line and
just cut a slit. I'm going to do that
for every one of these. Okay. And then once you've
got them all with a slit cut in them and it
doesn't have to be perfect, just get as close
as you can get. Now we're going to
take a big piece of our watercolor paper. Let's just go ahead and
grab one of these 12 by eighteens And the mayor may not use all
those sheets since I'm going to go ahead
with the 12 by 18. What we're looking
for is we're going to create a five inch piece, a five inch strip. So I'm just going to mark
5 " because remember, I wanted that to be
five I wanted that to be half of the total
height of the book. So I'm just going to mark that and cut that into
a five inch strip. And then this is where
you want to have, if you can, something with just a sharper
little pointy edge, not a pair of scissors, though. You don't want it to be
sharp that it's cutting it. But maybe the backside of a butter knife or
something like that. And what I'm going to do
is take a piece of tape. And tape this down so it stays straight because
as you're cutting, you will get you'll move all
over the place accidentally. I find if you go ahead and get it lined up and
straight to start with, it's a lot easier
to then come back, mark these at 1 " intervals, and then I'll show you what
we'll be doing with that. I'm going to mark these
at 1 " intervals. I want them to be every inch. Then what I'm going to
do is line those up, get the paperwork, it's
not going to move on me. I'm going to take this bone folder right to
the side of that. I'm on a cutting
mat so this works. I'm just going to
score it as if I cut it with a knife and it'll
give me a little divot. Then that will allow me to fold that in
a precise location, whereas if you're
just folding it, which you certainly can
do, it's not as precise. I just think it's easier if you give yourself a
little fold divot. But you don't have to. I
just think it's easier. And it gives us a better, more precise seam
if you do that. I do have one of these. It's it's got the lines on it so you can run your tool up and down the
lines, but it's not exact. Every time I tried to use it, it somehow would get off and they would be not
even in a straight line. I need those to be
straight, not to be telescoping like that. I did not like using
the scoring board. I found that this
was better for me. It worked. I got my nice line. I didn't have to have
a scoring board, so if you don't have one, I found that I did not like mine. I don't know if that's
for card scoring, but my friend had one. She's like, you like this tool. I got it and I was like, this thing is not, and I
don't know if I'm just old. And so trying to find
those lines on there, I kept hitting the wrong line, which I'm sure is
exactly what happened. But I found that if I do it with a ruler and just a
sharper bone folder, I get the line where it
needs to be and it comes out straight exactly like
it's supposed to be. I don't know if you've ever
tried one of those or not, but I actually found that thing frustrating and I
don't recommend it. Probably work a lot better
with thinner paper too, because this watercolor paper is super thick. Okay. Then once we get that cut, we are going to make
this into a zig zag. So we're gonna fold it one way and then we're going to
fold it the other way. And you can see how
having that line there, lets you get that nice, precise fold very easily. And then they all line up exactly like
they're supposed to. And then as we go, we can
sharpen that down with our bone folder and really
get a nice crisp edge. So once you get that folded, just start zigzagging
it back and forth. This is what's going to make
our hinge for our book. And because I use
that shorter paper, it'll kind of
determine if you don't want to glue two sheets
of paper together, if you use a shorter
paper, it'll determine how many of those sheets of paper
I'm actually going to use. So I could have done
this first if I was questioning in my mind which one I was
actually going to use. Because what we're doing is now, this is our spine right here. These two flaps go to our
covers, and we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight mountains. The eight mountains will now determine how many sheets
of paper that we can use. I got one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight with the four sheets that
I actually cut. Then I have my little
template sheet which I'm just going
to keep as a template. The 12 by 18 sheet of paper will give you eight sheets and a front cover
and a back cover. So now I'm ready to
cut my bookboard. I want to get all
my cuts and stuff done right at the
beginning here. I'm just going to measure out
the bookboard that I've got is 10 " by 12 and
a quarter inches. I need it to be the 10 " one way and then the width of the book. I don't really want it too
far out past the book, so I'm just going to use
my paper here to say, Okay, write about here
is where I want that. Then I'm going to cut
that right there, and I got a little tiny
plastic T square that I love. But you can do two marks in
a ruler just like we did with the paper a second ago. But the T square gets it lined up right there
and makes it super easy. But you got to be real careful
with the knife because now we're not using that metal
one that's a little taller, so you're more likely to accidentally come up off of the cardboard
and cut yourself. Then when I get to the end, I have a really bad habit of going out that
way accidentally, just going and then
naturally going that way. So be real careful that you keep everything tight with the knife. With the bookboard or the
back of a watercolor pad, you just want to
score several times. It's real thick, so don't even bother trying to
get it in one cut. You're going to go
through several cuts and then eventually you'll
feel it break through. Like I just felt it right there. And then you can just lift
it up and lift the rest off. And now that's the size of our book. So there's our cover. And because I've
already got the size, I'm just going to
mark the second one and cut a second one of these. There we go. Now we've got two covers cut and we are ready to decide what's
that cover going to be? What am I going to use? Am I
going to use a piece of art? Am I going to use a
piece of handmade paper? I'm going to go ahead and cover that cover. I'll be right back. I've got some really pretty
blue handmade paper. I think I'm going to use it. Basically, what I'm looking to do is just get a piece that's about an inch outside of my
bookboard it looks like, where's the other piece
of bookboard Looks like I could do that with one side there
and just cut this length. So I'm just going to take
my scissors and cut that. And then on the inside, when we stick this down, kind of feeling like this will be what I stick
down on the inside, as I was kind of like
looking and thinking. So I might cut this real quick. I want it to be a tad
smaller than the board, like maybe a quarter of an
inch 'cause I need it to be centered and be close. So I'm just gonna take
my knife and do this. And if your knife gets dull, you can kind of
tell when it stops cutting that you might
need to re up your blade. But for the moment,
I'm gonna keep going. And it doesn't have
to be perfect. Again, I'm just looking
for enough that'll cover my seams on the
inside of the book. So that's all that's all we're looking
for. That's the goal. There we go. So two of those. And then I'm just gonna
cut this in half. So we're gonna save these
for a little while. We're not gonna use
those immediately. And then this stuff, does it have a front?
Does it have a back? So just decide, like, which side you want to use kind of looks similar to me, but I'm
gonna use this side. And you can do the front
and the back cover two different papers, you don't have to do
the same thing too. So with a lot of
books that I've made, the front and the back cover are different in that one
I was showing you, that back cover is a different fabric than
that front cover, and you can do fabric
covers for these two. Anything that you can glue
down to these boards, you could do that with fabric
too if you want to get creative with all of the pieces and whatever
you've got on hand. Get creative with it. There's lots of stuff
that you could do. You don't have to do any of the things that I'm doing here. You could definitely get creative there with
what you're doing. Alright, so I'm just going to turn that over and
kind of center it. Stick that down. I'm going to do the same on
this other one. And I wish I had like a half inch more
there on the sides, but I should have plenty
of this to cover it, so it's not even
going to matter. But in my mind, I feel like
I'd like it a tiny bit more. Then I'm just going to
cut towards the edge, in a shape of a y and leaving
enough to cover the edge. I don't want to leave too much, but I don't want to
leave too little either. I do have a tendency
to leave too little. Let's do this one
first, and we'll see if I left too little or not. I still should be
covered fine though. I like to go end to end. I'll start on this end first and then I'll flip
it around and do this end Because if you're
working with a material that for whatever reason
wants to pull like a fabric, you don't want to pull it as you're going around
the sides there, you definitely want to
pull one side and pull the other like we're doing
here with the end to end and then side to side. The goal is just to
get a nice edge that's covered or cardboard and
not leave cardboard. That's the goal. Alright. I got it.
Wow, I got it. And then look how
pretty the cover is. Look how pretty the cover is, so this is definitely
going to be directional because I can see
a direction. Okay. So we just need to make
sure that's stuck down. If I didn't get any glue on it, we'll go by and get
some glue there. And then we'll set
that to the side. Maybe I'll set that
under this map for a second to stick it down. Now we're ready to do this one. I have an edge that's
not quite down, so we'll go ahead and get
a little more glue under. Well, I just pulled
that whole thing up. I think the mowers
have showed up. So if you hear a slight little
wine in the background, I think they've got
their blowers out. Hmm. Let's see how I did. Oh, good, yeah. Just like to
see it cover those edges. There we go. Now we've got those
two glued and I might sit both of
them under here just to let those sit and dry. And now we are ready to
start assembling our book, so I'll see you in
the next video.
5. Assembling Book: All right. We're ready
to assemble our book, and I went ahead and cut our little flap holders
that we're going to use, and I have cut them a little bit larger than the
size of the flap. I'm going to feed
through this and you'll see what we're
doing in a moment. It'll make sense. But I wanted it smaller than the
size of the book. So I have just gone and taken another piece
of this paper, the big sheet, and I've
cut it into thirds, and then I've cut those
thirds into half. That has left me with
something that's in the range of six and a quarter
inches by 8 ", which is just slightly smaller than the book and we
frame it out nice. This will be the part
that's in the center, so it's its own little page. We can glue the whole thing
together and it can just be a double thick page
with a front and a back, or we can turn it into a pocket and then we can still paint the
front and the back, but then we can also
slip something inside. How much fun would that be? That's what I'm
going to do. So this is what we're going to
do to assemble our book, and then I've got the cover right under there ready for us. So we need these little end
flaps to be sticking up. That's going to be our end
pieces when we're done. And what we're going to
do is we're going to thread each of these
little mountains, leaving that flap out there, we're going to thread each of
these little mountains into the slit that we created here in the
middle of these pages. I want to be able
to pull the slit all the way up and
then I want to be able to glue these on each side of the slit so that it becomes
a great big flap in there. I want to do it without the slit pulling itself out every time. I'm going to put glue on it, but it really helps for either these the
double stick tape. I've got some of
those to really make the paper stay where
I put it until the glue dries because it takes a minute for
the glue to dry. I'm just going to
put some of these little squares on here. And then I'm going to also put
glue down the center part, but those squares will help me hold that paper where I put it. And I found that to be way easier than trying to hold
it there in the glue dry and then go to the next piece
and it not all get out of whack because the problem is
not when you're in this tab. It's when we go to
do the next piece. That's when we start going into what the heck just happens. I'm going to put a
little bit of glue on each side of this tab. And then I'm also going to put some glue all the
way around on these. That glue might be where that tab is now that I'm doing that. If you need to take a pause in between doing each of these, you can certainly do that too. But the goal is
stick it where both of these mostly line up and
you've got your tab there. Then once we've got that
one where we want it, we're ready to close that one
and go to the second tab. Now we're ready to feed
our second one right into that second
little mountain right into that tab that we
created with this one. And I'm gonna get my
little stickies here and try to do a better job at not putting the
glue on the sticky. But, I mean, still, it
works out in the end. I just find it's neater if we kind of prep for some
of this going into it. Alright. So I'm gonna actually
put the glue on the tab, but maybe not on the
paper right there. There we go, once we've got
that one stuck in there, I'm just going to fold this over and give it a nice press. There's going to be a
little bit of leeway. You're gonna have a
little tiny bit there. You got to have enough for
it to actually, you know, function as a book and
open and close and stuff. So you'll have a little
tiny bit of a tab there. I just find that less
is better if we can. And then we'll stick that down. And we're ready to feed the
next mountain into the paper, and I'm going to continue
that for all eight sheets. And I'm not worried if
it's completely lined up. I like the funkiness of it. I also have some mini glue dots that might be
interesting to try. They're little
tiny, tiny things, but they may be more
sticky than the tabs. And I thought, oh, I have these. I might just pull them
out and give them a try. You know, if you've got
the double sided he's of a a little thing that, like, gives you a whole line
of double sided adhesive, that would be a good idea. That blue dots sticking
to the side of the box. So just get creative there
with what you've got. And don't get too stuck on
it, but just, you know, there are some ways
to kind of take away some of the stress
of making the book and I thought these would
definitely be a way to get that sticking without
moving so much. Okay. I'll do I need
some on the other side. They make a bigger
size glue dot. I need a bigger glue dot.
These are the small ones. So if you can get the
medium sized glue dot, that's a good size. I've had these for a long time. And then you can see how
our pages are working out. So after you get that next one, you're ready to move
on to the next one. You might find as
you're going setting something up underneath
that like that book I just sat there might make it easier because
these are getting taller, it'll be easier to
support that side so that our hinge doesn't
try to continue to pull itself out before
we get it where we want it. If the glue sticks
not doing it for you, the Eileen's tacky
glue is a good choice. I've got the tacky glue and a couple of
different versions, you might consider
the tacky glue if it's not staying where
you need it to stay. This one is not wanting to stay. It's probably it's
getting so thick. The tacky glue did a pretty
good job on that last piece. I might do the tacky glue. What I like about tacky
glue is it dries faster, but you just kind of
take a minute in between each one and let it dry. So if you don't
mind gluing a page, waiting a moment to let it
set up and do its thing, this is definitely
a good way to go. I like trying out
different methods, even as I'm doing stuff with you guys because then I can tell
you in real time, oh that worked or oh
that didn't work. I guess I could
just say, Oh, look, I perfected everything, but then did you really
learn anything? I want you to learn as we do, and we experiment, and we play, so I'm going to let each I'm
going to stick that with the tacky glue and then we'll
evaluate did we like that? Yeah. Alright, so far so good, we're down to three
left to attach. Just take your time
with each of these, let the glue set up. I did like the way the
tacky glue one just did compared to the stick glue. That was interesting. If you've got the tacky glue on hand, I did really like
the way that worked. So we're going to tacky
glue the rest of these. Then I just clipped them with some little clips and
played on my phone for a couple minutes and it was set up enough for me
to move to the next one. This handmade paper doesn't want to take the sticky tape
like I was hoping. But it definitely
takes the tacky glue. I'm just making a
pocket out of each of these so I can just
slip stuff in it, pretty little pieces of art. Something that I painted,
just something fun in there. I like that. I like
that idea of having little lovely things
that you can tuck in in your art journal. Yeah. So having these
extra little book clips help these little
baby bowl clips, especially, you just clip those and keep them in
place and you're not trying to keep them
in place yourself. I like that. And then the little bigger ones at
the bottom, and we were set. And then we just let that
set up and dry a bit. If you'll just let that set
there with the tacky glue, that has been fantastic. If we compare that to
earlier ones that have already dried, those stay too. So that is actually working
out fantastic also. All of those are set
and they're not moving. So either way is a
good way to do this. But I like the
tacky glue option. The other two options
are working also. Play and experiment with what you got on hand and then give it time to dry before we
move on to the next page. All right. I've got the last page
on there and I was just letting that take a
few minutes to set up. Because the tacky glue
sets up pretty quick. Now we are back now we've got our back and front
pieces left to attach. And so I'm going to be
careful on that front one. But these are here at the very
front are definitely dry. And so whichever
method you pick, whether you pick little glue
dots and the glue stick, that works out really
good actually, and I've got a pocket
that I can now slip stuff into like a piece of art or something that can
live in that pocket. Which I'm just, love, love. I like that I can have it in the watercolor paper
or that I can have it as one of our old papers
or handmade papers, so you can be real creative
with what you make this flap, but you need something to hold that flap on this
side of the paper. You got to do
something. You just got to decide what is
that going to be. Then as we're
working in the book, I like that it'll lay flat and then we can work
in it and lay flat. It's flexible. It's going to
do some fun things there. If we look at the back side, we can see we've got our nice hinge here and then
our paper on each side. Now we're ready to
attach our book covers, which I have been letting
dry really good under here. This is the way the
book cover needs to be. What I need to do is glue this hinge to that book cover on each side and let that dry. I'm going to just
take some tacky glue on each side of that, and
I'm going to do that. Almost out of my tacky glue. I wonder if I got
more in this one. Yeah. I like the
acid free tacky glue because then it won't
yellow over time, whereas the regular
tacky glue could yellow. I've not had trouble
with that at this point, but that doesn't mean that I won't in the future if I'm
using the regular one. This one is quick
dry tacky glue, which is very handy because if I'm gluing
this on the cover, it would be nice
if it dries fast. Fast would be good. So I could go ahead and
do it this way, actually. Here we go. Let's
just line it up. Let's make sure we're lined up. And then is that exactly
where I want it? I think it is. Okay,
so let's do that here, too, and then I'll get them lined up. That's the better way. We're going all the
same direction. Let me just double check. Yes, we are. I'll make sure that I'm lined up before we all get
completely dry there. Then I'm going to let that
sit for a moment and dry because I want to make
sure that I'm not gluing this to my
watercolor page. You got to be careful.
If you plan on using your watercolor
paper for watercolor, you want to be careful not to glue your
book to your cover. I but I can put gesso on that. I do mixed media work,
so I'm okay if I get a little bit off glue on the paper because
I can just so it, but be real careful if you're
planning to watercolor that you don't glue
it all on your pages. Oh, yeah, there we
go. I'm just making sure that I've got it all even and I don't have glue
or I don't need glue. It's going to dry pretty quick, so I'm going to let
that set up now and dry and then I'll be right back because we still got to finish the inside
of these pages.
6. Finishing Touches: Alright. I've given
that time to set up. It's not completely dry dry,
so you got to be careful, but it is set up
enough that I can now attach my inside papers. And at this point, too, before you get it all finished
out, you got to decide, do you want a rib enclosure
or anything that you need to glue down before you glue
down this end paper? Because once you
glue down the end paper, it's pretty set. Okay, I thought I'd show
you real quick how I might sew a button and
ribbon on this since, um you might find that fun and something
fun to add to yours. I'm going through all
my little buttons here, and I really love the
great big ceramic buttons that I've used on a lot of my other
handmade art journals, but a lot of these are just not grabbing me
because I'm like, I find these at Joanne
Fabrics and Michael's. These little ones are
this organics brand. These great big ones are
this organics brand. I think that's Joanne's. Then Michael's has
just some like this. You just need to look
and see what you got available near you, but these organic ones
are my favorites. But I thought I found this one. It's another one of
these organic buttons. I liked that. That was okay. I'm thinking that button and maybe ribbon closure in
the brown because I don't have a ribbon that I like really any better with
the color that I've got here. I got all these at Hobby Lobby. Oh, Hobby Lobby and
Joyens, not chels. Hobby Lobby carries a lot
of these this size button, and then the Joens
ones is even bigger. I like these great
big ones on some of my books are
this big or bigger. But I don't like the colors
that I've got left for this. I'm going to go with
this pretty brown one. These came from Hobby Lobby
and their little fabric area and um they have
lots of good sales. If you go when they're
having a good sale, totally worth
grabbing some ribbon. I'm thinking what we need to do. I'm measuring ribbon
size real quick here is on the back side, and these look like this is the way that goes up, so
this will be the back. I'm going to have the ribbon glued and then the end
paper glued on top of that. I'll cover that. You'll
see a lump under there, but it'll still give
it a finished edge. I need to decide if I've got
that much going under there, how much do I want to
have to wrap around? Do I want to wrap it all the way around and then
around the button. So feeling like that. Enough to do that
and wrap around the button and have a
little lit leftover. So feeling like that is
the length that we need. Because that'll give you
enough ribbon for it to get fatter as you put
more in the book. Then I have these on a ribbon and a pencil
holding them there, and these are hanging
from a little picture hook over by my window. I think it's a really good
way to store your ribbon, which is why I'm showing it to you because you can see
everything you got. I love it. We've
decided on this button, get that piece of thread out of there this button
has a crack in it, so I'm glad we're not using
it for anything important. And what I would do to decide,
I've got enough ribbon. Let's go ahead and
glue the ribbon down. I'm going to use that same
quick dry glue right here. Going to come back
to the end paper. About center is what
I'm looking for. And if the book is 10 " tall, center is about 5 ",
somewhere right in here. I want to give that
ribbon enough room there to really stick in
good and not come loose, and then that'll
be up underneath our end paper so it
won't come back up. We're going to let
that one dry under the weight of the book
while we do the ribbon. The button. The button, again, I'm going to about center it at about five ish inches
somewhere right in there. I'm going to take an all. I'm going to actually use this bookboard under here
and I'm going to take all and punch a
hole through this. I'm doing it before I
put the end papers on, but you can do it after.
You'll just see the thread. I'm going to see if we
can cover the thread. It'll be a little lump under our paper, but it's
not a big deal. I'm just going to get those
holes in there real good. On the back side, you can see I've got two holes right there, and then I've got
some wax thread. I like putting these
on wax thread, but you can do it with
whatever you've got on hand. This just happens to be some of my book tools that
I've got handy. That's why I'm using it.
I'm just going to cut the thread a little bit
longer than I need it. Go ahead and thread my
gigantic embroidery needle because that's what I
use with the book stuff. I'm going to tie
myself a knot here on one side, and then I'm
going to double that. And then we'll be ready
to attach our button. It's really easy. Well, I want that to be at
about the same spot. Before I tighten it down, I'm going to loosen it back up. The wax thread,
it's one of those that once you get set,
it's hard to unset it. So if you don't get that
knot where you need it, don't tighten it up yet. Double knot, and I'm
just going to go into the one side and then make sure it stays and
then I've got my button, go through the second
little hole there. Now we've got two holes
for our button and I do a couple of
times through that. Now I'll just come right back on the other side and go right through the
hole that we had there, right back up through this hole. I'm going to sew it a couple of times to make sure
that is secure. Maybe one more and then tie
it off on the backside. There's our button, and then I'm just going to tie that
off on the back side. I'm just going to go
through that loop and then I've made a
loop right here and I'm going to go through that loop and then I'm just going to pull that down and then the third, go through that loop and then that's going
to tie that down. I'm going to do that two times because I like a double knot. Pull it through, go through the loop. Then we've
got a loop here. I'm going to go through
that loop again. And pull it tight.
Now you're ready. That wax thread just
holds onto stuff. You're ready just to
cut those threads down. I could have done it
before or after I put that book paper on there, but I chose to do it before. Then we are ready to
do our end pages. Now I've let that got a button,
look how pretty that is. I have been letting that dry now for a minute
with the ribbon. Now I'm just going to
take some glue stick to glue that paper down. I don't need the real
thick tacky glue. I need the glue stick, and there we go. That one's all set. Good deal I need to now, just glue this down right here and you see how
that'll cover that nicely. I like that. I can
either put it all on here and come
within a quarter of an inch or so of the edges and then make sure I get the
edges on the paper itself. Might be the easiest way or I can put the glue on
the paper either way. This paper does have
a front and a back, so I'm just being careful to get the front on sticking
out like it should. I'm just going to go around
the edges here to make sure that that gets
stuck down good. I you don't want to have any big lumps of glue because if you're using
a paper like I'm using, those show up
underneath your paper. Then we just glue it down. So you might even
take your bone folder and just smooth all that out. Wa look how pretty
the back of that is. Look how pretty that is. Oh, my gosh. It's gorgeous. Now we're just going
to do the front side also. We got this one here. You're going to have
a little bit of a rise, where we
did that thread. If you wanted to sew the
button on afterwards, you'd see the thread
itself or do like I do, and you're going to
have a little bump here, but we know what it is. It's the thread to the button. You can just push
it a little bit and I'll push it down
in there real good. Look at that. Oh, my
gosh, look at that. Now our book is all set
and it's nice and thick. We could stack this under some books for a
while if we wanted to let that rest and really settle down to the size
book it's going to be. But it's going to
be a little bit fatter book because we did the hinging and we had
the inserts in the pages, so it's not meant to be thin. Then look you here. Now we have a completely finished
book that's still drying. That first one especially is
still drying a little bit. But now we are ready to start painting and decorating
and slipping in special little pieces into our pockets and have
some fun with our book. Look at that the back,
beautiful, beautiful. Love it. Now that we've sewn
ribbon on here, we can just go around the book. I like the velvet ribbon, so that's why I use
the velvet ribbon, but we can go
around the book and then come back over here and wrap the ribbon
around the button. Anyway, we want to
do that. You can just play with your button
and your ribbons there, and now we have a
lovely finished book with a button and
a ribbon on it. Hope you enjoy making one
of these hinged books. They're really
cool. They're easy. They're a little bit
time consuming as far as getting your glue to dry
in between each layer, but after that,
they're gorgeous. Then you can have a fun
little ribb enclosure. You can even go
without the button and just loop the ribbon like this if you don't want
to have a button on yours. Lots of choices there. I
can't wait to see your books. I hope you give one
of these a try. This will definitely be one
of those that I'm painting in quite a bit and adding new videos as
we work in our books. I'm pretty excited to get
to play in this book. I like that they lay flat and we can decorate the different pages and we didn't have to sew
anything. It was all glued. Let's hope you enjoy
making one of these, and I'll see you guys next time.
7. Final Thoughts: Thank you for joining me in this Accordion hinged
art journal workshop. I hope this class has inspired
you to explore the art of bookmaking and spark new
ideas for creative projects. By learning how to craft a unique journal from
start to finish, you've not only
gained new skills, but also created something
truly personal and special. Remember, the techniques
you've learned here can be applied to
countless variations. Experiment with
different papers, sizes and embellishments to make each journal
uniquely yours, whether you use the journal for mixed media or simply
as a keepsake. We hope it becomes
a cherished part of your creative journey. I'd love to see your
finished journals, so don't forget to share your work and connect
with fellow artists. Keep creating, but I can't wait to see you in another
workshop soon.
DENISE LOVE, Artist & Creative Educator
