From Scrap to Treasure: Creating Unique Art Journals

1. Introduction: Step into the world of artistic expression with our scraps to Treasure's Art Journal bookmaking workshop. This is a companion workshop to Martes andal journals workshop, unleashing more ideas to spark your creativity. We'll explore various papers, vintage finds, and more, allowing you to choose the style that suits your vision. This class is designed for creatives of all levels and offers a unique opportunity to blend various materials and papers into a personalized custom art journal. I'm Denise Love, an artist and creative educator. I'm excited to bring you this fun and exciting dive into handmade art journals. Whether you're looking to create a book of your own favorite papers, art, vintage finds, and more. You'll find inspiration and guidance as we delve into the art of creating and binding your own art journals. 2. Class Project: Your class project, you will create a custom art journal from start to finish. Begin by gathering a mix of materials, your favorite art papers to create on, old art pieces, vintage papers, fabrics, handmade papers, and any other elements that speak to you. Then you'll bind these pages into a sturdy, artistic journal with a handmade cover that reflects your personal style and creativity. Share your progress, ideas, and final creation with the class to help inspire and get inspired by the collective creativity. D. 3. Inspiration & Books: Let's talk about what has inspired this class for me. I have just gone down this huge rabbit hole of making beautiful journals because I bought the Dina Weekly mixed Media journal. I don't know, maybe six months ago. And then they sold out worldwide because they were at the end of their life of making these. This is a rather gigantic journal that has different types of pages in it, Watercolor pages, burlap, Canvas, and craft paper pages. Let's see. Brown craft paper pages. Because these have sold out worldwide, and I have thoroughly enjoyed painting and creating and growing my art practice and showing up, painting this book for me is an abstract journal where I'm just picking whatever it is that inspires me that day, whether it be a color palette or an idea or an art material, and I'm just creating in this journal different painted layouts for whatever I'm inspired to do that day. Because now, I am probably three quarters of the way done with this journal, and I have loved making these so much. I thought, we need to learn how to make these for ourselves since we can no longer get them. That led to The first book workshop that I did, which was the Artisanal journals, where we recreated that book as closely as I could. It's about 2 " about an inch and a half shorter and about an inch shorter width wise. But to make it affordable and feasible, that's the size I ended up with with the papers that I was using. I decided that since I liked working on the watercolor pages that I would put more watercolor pages and fewer of the other pages, but they're still in there, and every section has a different material in it. Our original inspiration journal had all the same material in every section, whereas when you're making them yourself, You can put a different material in every section. I picked a canvas and I picked a linen and I picked a jute. I picked some of these really yummy, fun, different services. I put in less craft paper because even though I like the craft paper, they weren't my favorite, and then my favorite are the watercolor pages. I have more watercolor pages than anything else. I have a full art journal. With a beautiful cover that's not just plain black, and I could have painted that, but this is a handmade paper. Now I'm super excited because this was so beautiful. Because I loved that one so much that I was like, Hey, what if I make another one and I intersperse even more different papers, not the same ones from the Inspiration journal. I made myself one of these where I had handmade papers. And different handmade papers and every section. I have in the first section, this yummy, very dimensional one and this block print one. These are handmade papers in Nepal, and they're just beautiful. Every section, I've got a couple of watercolor pages and very interesting handmade paper pages, and I've got pages with lace papers, so you can see through it. Now this journal is even more beautiful to me and more special. Than the original one that I made. I thought, Wow, this is so amazing, we need to make one of these with the different papers in it for class to expand upon our original idea that we did. We end up making one of these in class. This is it, and I'm using beautiful handmade papers. And a lovely, different handmade paper here on the outside? Look how beautiful that is. I just so excited. I even made this one with an extra signature in it. We've got even more pages in this book than we had in the one I just showed you. I've got more dimensional pages in here. Every section has watercolor papers to paint on and then additional papers to then experiment on. I know that people are going to want to know, what do you do on these papers like this? How do you do whatever you're going to do. You can either leave them like they are. If they're delicate, or you want to use some paint on it and you don't think it's going to hold up. You can just paint clear Gesso on whatever side you're wanting to paint on. Maybe you'll paint on the back side and leave the front side like it is. You can just really all kinds of things that you can do. But I would put clear Gesso on that and let it dry and it's ready for whatever you want to do with it. I have a huge variety of different pages here. In mind that I got so excited about being able to use in this exceptionally beautiful art journal that I'm going to show you in class that we've made. Then there's also some art that have already interspersed in here. You could even paint all the art that you're going to paint and then build your book. You don't have to build the book and then be afraid to use it because all the pages are blank. You can paint all the art and get all your favorite pieces together that you're like, Okay, now I'm ready to make the book, and then when you make the book, it'll already be done and painted in and beautiful. Just another option for you there. But I love how gorgeous these end up. Then I actually on this one, put a ribbon tie on it, so I'll show you how we do that in class. Then that led to making a little artifolios, where we have painted art pieces and some different stuff in there. Then making a lovely journal from old books that are basically ready to move on to the next life of whatever they're going to be. This has just got water paper color in it, water paper in it so that I can paint and draw and whatever I want to do. That's the third journal that I was inspired to make here in class. I just wanted to tell you where that came from, how excited I got when I made that first workshop, that I wanted to continue giving you a few more ideas on bookmaking that are super easy and anybody could do so that you could start making lovely journals for yourself. Since the one that was my favorite is gone and everybody is like, Oh, no, I think it's very intimidating to make books if you've never made one before. It is crazy, easy to make these compared to how you think it's going to be. I just wanted to show you a few more ideas in addition to what inspired me. I showed you some other books in that first workshop, so I'm going to show you a few more that I happen to have and like. Get messy art. This is the no rules, no judgment, no pressure approach to making art, which you know for me, That's exactly how I like to create. This is by Kaylee Gray, CAYLEE Gray. In here, she gives you lots of different ideas, working in sketchbooks and putting together art books just like what we've created a few of here, but here's some more inspiration for you and some other artists it looks like in the back to be inspired by. Um, so look at that. I like having some ideas to look at if I get stuck. That's why I like to collect books because then I can stop. I can look around in different books and then a color or a shape, or maybe something like this will then trigger some cool idea for me. I really liked this book because it is about working in art journals and not getting hung up. With working as you're going. Click how pretty that is. That would be a super easy page. You could paint a great big piece of paper or lots of little papers, cut it in squares, and there's your page. I love that. That might have inspired a whole another set of ideas for me after I saw that. Super cool. These are This one's fun. I'm It's newer for me, so I haven't read it cover to cover. But even just looking through it, I'm super inspired, and I can't wait to maybe try some of these ideas or see where these ideas take me as a jumping off point. I love that one. Get messy art. This one's fun by Helen Wells, Expressive sketch books, develop creative skills, courage, and confidence. This one's more working in your book, getting inspired, getting out in nature, looking at things in your environment, So yeah, lots of fun here in this one, lots of color to be inspired by. That's a good one. Creative wonder Lust. This is by Kasia Avery, which I might have said her name wrong, I'm sorry if I did. Look at that beautiful book that she's working on in the cover there. That right there makes me want to open one of these and get painting. Oh, see so many creative people out there. I just love that there are others out there. Look at this. I love anything that's got a color palette on it. I love that there are other beautiful creatives out there that will share the things that they do. They're not worried about sharing their secrets. That's my philosophy and my art is generosity, and I'll tell you how I do anything that I do. I just don't think that The secrets are the way to go. I like to inspire people and I want you to get creative and look at that. Oh, I like that. I want you to see where that jumps you off for your next creative project. This one, particularly like this one. This is creative Wonderlust. Your artistic potential through mixed media art journaling techniques. This book I've had for many years and I actually took this workshop. This is a workshop, and then she wrote a book about it. This is the painted art journal by Jean Oliver. She is super creative, and this workshop is actually a really nice one to take and see the different ideas and there's a particular portrait in here with the family that I loved that project, but you see we're working in old books. You see where some of these can jump you off into new ideas and she's actually painting on the book pages. If you've got an old book or an old ledger, old ledgers are really nice. You can paint in those. Jess that page with clear Jess when it's ready to paint on and it'll sturdy it up for different materials that you might be putting on it. I love that one. This one's focused around family and the different people, relatives, and things like that. Here's the one I was thinking about, different things in your life, and it makes a circle coming out of there. Super creative. I've always found this particularly beautiful page. This book, I love Love. I definitely say this would be probably my number one pick and this creative wonder lust might be my number two pick. Then we get to get messy, my number three pick if you want to know which ones of those are the ones that you really want to may be inspired by. I just wanted to share some extra inspiration for you as jumping off points after you've been here making some of these delicious art journals to work in. I hope you enjoy this class. It is a companion class to the artisanal journals class where we make several different journals in that class, including my original one inspired by the commercial book that's no longer available. I hope you enjoy making these and taking it to the next level, and I'll see you guys in class. 4. Treasure Journal - Supplies: Let's take a look at the supplies for Project one. I think on this, I might just do a supply video for each project because it might just be overwhelming. For Project one, we are making another mixed media journal similar to the original one that I made in the artisanal workshop, and that was this one. This was modeled off of the Dina Wakey mixed media journal that I have been working in that they no longer make and I wanted something similar that had different types of paper in it. This one has canvas and burlap and craft paper pages. This first book that I had made in the Artisanal journals class was as close to that type of journal as I could get, but changing up a little bit to include The more of the papers that I loved, still some interesting other papers, but less of them, basically. I had more watercolor pages because that's what I loved. I did that journal with those different pages. Then for this workshop, it's more of your favorites, your treasures, you include pieces of your art in books and maybe make art books things that are, you know, special to you. I actually wanted to do another mixed media journal for myself and I did. I made this one, but I wanted to be things that were special to me, not a replica of the commercial journal. In this one, I collect handmade papers when I go to the art store I have for several years. I was like, H, D I don't know what I'm ever going to do with these, but they're so beautiful I got to have them. Now I am pulling all of those out of their little di hole under a bed in the guess room, and I'm using them. I think these are just going to get more and more beautiful with age. In this book, I have included lots of different interesting textured papers, handmade papers. I've flanked them with watercolor papers so that I could then have things to paint on and I can paint on the decorative papers too, but they're almost decorated enough as they are. Then I've actually tried to save the stickers on the ones that I have put in here, but obviously I didn't get that one off, but I want to save the stickers that I could figure out what they are later. But I love including in between the watercolor pages, these handmade decorative papers that I have collected, wanted to use for a long time. And so that's what I've done. I have made an art journal more custom and special to me and what I would want in a mixed media journal. And so just to show you the different options I've included in here, and you don't have to include handmade papers in yours. Each section has a different set of papers in it. There's four sections in this book. You don't have to do handmade papers in yours. This is how I chose to customize mine with something that I have that is special to me. And so I've decided to use my collection of handmade papers and the cover is a handmade paper. In class, because I made that one, I loved it so much, I thought, Okay, let's do that project in this class and include papers or paintings or whatever it is that's special to you, include that in a lovely journal. The cover is a handmade paper for me. And your cover could be a handmade paper or something that you paint on a big enough piece of paper that you could use it for the cover. Just keep in mind the size of journal that you're going to create and the size pieces of art or papers that you need. This book that we're creating has different papers in it than the other one that I created as inspiration, and it's got more sections. This has got an extra section in it, which I love, and I have amazing sections in here that I am just insane about because they're gorgeous. Now there's some pages in here that I don't even have to paint, I could collage on them, I could paint them. If I were going to use handmade papers and say I was going to paint on the back side, I would use clear Gesso and Jess that and let it dry and then it's ready to accept any medium or work that I want to do on top of it. Just have some clear Gesso available to then paint the backside of something, or if it's more delicate, Jess will protect it. Or if you choose old papers and newspapers as your special thing, you could do that. Start thinking outside the box and getting creative here on what it is that you could use as these papers, and I'll go and take my tags off that I didn't save obviously. But here's one as an example, a painting that I did. I went ahead, included the painting in the book, flanked by a paper that I could then also Jess and paint or I could leave it like it is. That could be that page, and then the other half of that painting is here. So Get creative in the things that you're going to make and include in your book. Doesn't have to be the same things that are special to me. I just thought this was super interesting to have these different sections in here and then be finished off. This one is still drying, so I'm going to set it back under a heavy book. But look how gorgeous this thing is with a ribbon that can wrap around it. I love it. Let's just take a look at the supplies for this project now that we peek at what the project is. I'm using some glue sticks for the cover because it's so much easier and convenient than the liquid glue was. These came from the **** Blick, the art store. I just picked up a couple of sizes because I like working with those. If you could get ones that don't yellow or acid free, that'd be fantastic. Those don't say one way or the other, but they're underneath stuff. They're not going to be showing through in any way. So That's what I'm using. In general, for gluing book spines and stuff, usually would use PH neutral PVA glue. I actually used all of this glue and it's almost to the very bottom, but I'd say that did five or six books before I got down that far. The other choice of glue that you could use is Alenes acid free. Make sure you get the acid free one if you go this route, acid free tacky glue. This is non yellowing photo safe, no acid in it. You want the acid free glues if you can. That's the two choices of glue that you might consider. Get the PA if that's the one you're confined. Then I got a book binding kit off Amazon. I had the different pieces already. I had the bone folder and I had the all and I had on the needles already for books, and I had a thing of waxed threads. You don't have to get the book kit. But what I liked about this was this kit was like seven bucks and it came with an all and I actually like this all. I like this one too, but it's egg shaped and weird. This one actually, I like this one a tiny bit better. I like the one that came in the kit comes with a waxed thread that you can immediately begin using. It comes with several large needles and it comes with the bone folders. I love this kit, and I've actually been using this in class mostly because that's convenient and it was cheap. If you use regular linen thread or something like that, you will need a block of bees wax, and you need to wax that thread because it'll fray or it'll tear pages and the waxing just cements all that together and helps you not tear your pages and things when you're making stuff. You can get bees wax and thread if you want. But I like the wax thread. Better. It's already ready. I'm also cheating a little bit on the insides of the book so that I can move a little faster and I'm using some book repair tape to tape things in place as I'm gluing so I can move along a little faster. You don't have to have that, but I saw it and thought, I need that. You could probably just use masking tape to do the same thing. I've got a nice utility knife and a cutting board because I'm cutting some stuff on mostly the cover of the book. For the cover of the book, You generally want to have some bookboard. This is chipboard sheets, or I think I show you this in class also. If you've got a watercolor pad of some sort, the back page of that pad is the same stuff. If you want to tear the back off of any of your watercolor pads, you don't have to buy this. You could just use that. If you've got any of those sketchbook pads that are glued together like that, steal the back of that. Because this is just stiff cardboard. You could also just use cardboard, your choice there. Then I chose as my special thing for this book to be handmade papers and these might be a little more expensive than say painting some of your own paintings or doing some jelly plate prints or something like that. But this is what was special to me and what was going to make this a true artisan book that I was going to love and then continue painting in. Was some handmade papers. I picked a cover that I wanted and in several papers that I had really that I'd gotten over the years and I've stash under my bed. I have found the Mulberry Papers website has most of these if you're not at like a **** Blick, where I find most of these. I go through their drawers and pick out the papers and I have just obsessed with handmade papers now and I had probably 20 of them, and I'm like, What am I going to do with these? Because I just pick up a few here and there. I just never knew what I was going to do with it. That's because they were all waiting for this project, but these range and price like seven or eight bucks a sheet. It can get expensive. You might spend $100 making your book. If you're using this. If you want to keep the cost down, just by just get your pack of watercolor paper. If you're using that cody paper, there's plenty of sheets in there for you to paint and decorate and do some stuff and then insert them in the book, or you can just use all watercolor pages and paint them all. You can use jelly plate prints if you do jelly plate stuff and maybe those are your hand painted papers that you're including. If you're afraid of messing up the book, which we're all afraid of that. It's a legit fear. If you're afraid of messing up the book, paint all your pages first and then assemble your book with all your painted pages, and then it's done when you assemble the book. There's lots of ways to approach making a book like this. I want to work in it and I want to be able to paint in it, and then I want to be able to flip through the pages and see the different textures and things. Maybe I'll add cool stuff to the watercolor paper, but I've got these cool graphic things in between. For me, this is what made these special for me. You just look at it and decide what's going to make it special for you. Then I did talk about using some ribbon or something to wrap around the book, or if you wanted to have an elastic piece on your book, you might need a thing of elastic, or if you want to have a little button here and have the thread come around and wrap around the button to close it for a closure, you could do something like that. You could get real creative with cover of the book and how you want to close it and add extra elements to it. That's something to think about. I did just get a thimble because I can't find the thimbles I had. That's very handy for pushing the needle. That would be just a nice if you have it, perk and a pair of scissors. That's basically all the supplies that I'm using here in this first project. Once we do the next project, I'll do a different supply video for that. I hope you have fun hunting out beautiful, special things for your art book, journal, treasure journal, whatever it is that you decide that you want to do for this, maybe big pieces of old newspaper. Old magazine pages, or maybe I painted things that you want to include or maybe jelly plate prints. You can see how you can really customize in between pages that you can paint on pages that are already interesting in their own way. I hope you have fun with this project, and I'll see you back in class. 5. Treasure Journal - Selecting and cutting papers: Today, I thought we would make a treasured journal that is inspired by my Dino Wakey journal that I made in the other class. That's the one where I was very inspired by this Dino Weakly mixed media journal that has the watercolor paper and the burlap, and the Canvas and the craft paper pages, and I loved this book so much as soon as I bought it and started using it, it sold out and they don't make it anymore. I decided because this is a book that I definitely want to continue working in or something like it in my artistic practice. We made this one in the other book class that I filmed RTs and all journals. In this book, I almost as close as I could replicated the different papers in that original book. We have the watercolor paper, we have the craft paper, also put in some canvas and I put in. In the different sections, I picked a different paper to feature in each section. I did alter it slightly to put more of the watercolor papers in it because that's what I liked. Then I have four sections in this book, so every section has some other interesting papers in it besides the watercolor, but it's basically an interesting canvas texture, craft paper, watercolor journal. It's a nice variety, but as close to the other book as I could get. Then we made a beautiful hard cover for it. In this class, this class is about things that we treasure and moving a little further with our bookmaking. I had made another book based on that book that I had made with a handmade paper cover, and you don't have to do handmade paper. This could be a surface that you've painted, and that's what your cover is, and that's what you treasure. But I've been collecting some of these handmade papers from the art stores for a while. I've never ever really had a purpose for and I've always thought, This is so beautiful. I have to have it, but I don't know why and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. This I made yesterday for myself. And I'm like, Whoa, we need to go ahead and make another one of these and this can be our first book here in this class because it'll refresh our minds on how to sew papers into the book and put the cover on to get us warmed up before we do some other projects in class. What I did was I created four sections and each section has two pieces of some type of handmade paper material, whether it be this ultra textured um, natural paper. I put the watercolor paper in it because I like to paint on those. Then I found some amazing paper texture to put in here. This one, I actually left the tag on it, which meant to leave the tag on the piece that I had left over. But this is the botic square. I found a bunch of these. Most of my handmade papers came from Blick, but if you look at the Blick site online, you don't see a lot of these. But there is a website, Mulberry papers, and I'll definitely provide you a link with that where I have found all of these Nepal handmade papers, mostly in that site. I was very excited about that. Because of the way we make these book sections where we fold paper in half, Every one of these papers that I have put in here are going to be featured on two different pages because it's doubled. I treasure these handmade papers, and I was like, Wow, I need to use these in a book. Look at this handmade paper. Amazing. And so they're gorgeous. Some of these are so beautiful that it's a cool way to have something already done in your journal that you don't have to do, and then you can just do the facing page. That's super cool. You could also just eso this paper and paint on top of it if you've got a surface that you're like, I want to paint it, or I want to add to it, you could put clear Gesso on top of your paper and that would prime it for the next thing that you want to do. And then we get to the other side of that. You see we've got those. You've got two features. Every section I've done here has a different handmade paper because I wanted a variety and only have one sheet of each of these papers. This is how I can use one sheet as we're making the four sections or five or however many sections you decide to put in your book. I can have a different amazing paper that I've treasured and collected through the years. Look at this one. It's a translucent, that paper I might leave it like it is or I might paint some color on it. I mean, there's all kinds of fun stuff that we can do. This is a way that we can use something that maybe we've collected and we treasure. For me, that is these handmade papers. This might be the coolest journal ever because It's amazing, and then I finish it off here with some watercolor paper or you could just leave it like it is as the back cover. Then the cover here is one of the papers. I'm going to make a second one of these in class because I love it so much and just show you how we put this together if you haven't watched the artisanal journals class. I'm going to be using the cody papers because I have it, and it's easy to get ahold of, and it's the handmade cotton paper. Then I'm going to be using a variety of handmade papers that I got that I still have not used. I still have a couple that haven't used that I'm like, Oh my gosh, now, this makes me want to go back to the art store and get for art papers. But you don't have to use handmade papers. For something like this, you can use things that you painted. You can paint some paintings on the paper that you're choosing to do, and then you can intersperse those out as pre painted pages. You could do jelly plate prints. You could do just some nice fun random mark making that you do on something like a craft paper. You can make your own papers. It doesn't have to be something like I've done. I just want to give you the idea and have you thinking a little further outside the box on what we can do. These papers are like 20 by 30 or somewhere in there. In this ti paper, I want to say it's like 12 by 16 in. I forget what size it is every time I go to use it 12 " by almost 17 ". It's a really good size paper. 20 sheets come in this package, and I think it was about $34 and when you fold it in half, it becomes the size of the book that I'm going to make. I got 20 sheets, that's plenty to do a whole book, like this book here. I did not even take the 20 sheets. I think I used 16 sheets. I could have made a whole fifth section. I think in this book, I'm going to maybe I'll do an extra section, but it was a good size book. I've got four signatures that I put in here, and I could do a one with five signatures. We'll just see. I've already pulled a bunch of papers that I haven't used so that I could I think I had a glue stick just fall so that I could decide what I wanted to use in the book and what I wanted to use as the cover. I'm going to use this red bot batik. It is red Bat BAT IC, floating a flower. This is the handmade Nepal paper, and I love it so much. I think it's going to be a really beautiful cover just like this one was, that I picked this for my cover. Then all the other papers, I've got some solid color handmade papers, which I could leave just like they are, I could collage on top of them, or I could just sew that paper and then add paint. Your choice on using solid papers, but these were so beautiful that I was like, Oh yeah I love those. I have this textured blue paper that I have. I've used it in something, but I don't think I've used it in a book. I don't think I have. Then I have a Japanese pattern paper I thought was gorgeous. Look at this paper, it's gorgeous and then another paper where you can see through it. I picked a really good variety and I'm going to cut these to the size that I need. I'm still going to have plenty of paper leftover. Let me put the red one behind me so that I do it last, that's going to be the cover. And basically, this is the size of the paper I need. You can see if I'm doing that, I have at least another page I could get out of that, and then I would have some extras for collage paper or something. Because this has a hand torn edge, I want to continue that hand torn edge. Let me grab my rip ruler. This is my dual edge ripper. It's about a two feet piece of acrylic with a nice fun edge on it, and it's going to give me an edge Almost the same as the edge that I have on this paper. So I like the look of the papers not being straight in my handmade book. So I have left as many decled edges and torn edges as I could get on these so that it wasn't straight, and I love that. Like, I love that. And so I'm just going to take one piece of the watercolor paper that's going to be the size of my book. And I'm just going to tear. They're very easy. You just tear towards the ruler. And then you can save the other half of that paper for something else, or you could put the same paper in the book twice in two different sections. Because this is my treasured stuff. I'm going to put a different paper in every section, but I've got two papers, I'm putting in between the watercolor papers. I mean there we go. There is our first one. I went ahead and grabbed two more pieces of paper, so we'll see those coming up. I decided because these papers are definitely thinner than the watercolor paper. I think that's why in the end, I decided the other book could have used a fifth section. I'm going to do a fifth section. I'm going to go ahead and tear or cut because a couple of these papers may not tear the rest of these papers, and then I'll just speed this up for you. Oh. Oh. Alright, I've got all my papers cut, I think. And what I'm gonna do is now you can decide like, what paper do you want to be in each section? I noticed on the book that I made, I did one watercolor paper, I did a colored paper, I did two watercolor papers, I did a colored paper, and then another watercolor paper. But when I did that, that made my inside of my book cover watercolor paper and the first page a textured paper, which is fine. I love this book and I'm okay with that. But I'm thinking I'd almost want this first page to be a watercolor paper, and I'd want the last page to be a watercolor paper rather than a a handmade paper. I think what I'm going to do to change that because the first page of that section is my book plate for the cover. I'm going to do two watercolor papers on the bottom. That when I put these together, that will give me the buffer piece of watercolor paper. Then a colored paper and a watercolor paper. I could do two watercolor papers If I wanted that extra piece of paper in there. Instead of an extra section, I could do an extra piece of paper, and then the watercolor paper on the top. That's how my sandwich will probably look and so then I have 12 water colors, a colored, two water colors to paint and a colored and a watercolor and this will fold, so that gives me a watercolor a whole watercolor section. I feel like that's going to be mine. I've used One, I'm going to do four, maybe one, two, three, I've used five of the watercolor papers. If I'm going to stick to the one package. Then four sections are what I'm going to create. Then what I'm going to do is fold these sections over and half, and then I'm going to with all my weight, press this down, and then I'm going to use a bone folder. To really help me seal that in. The bone folder is an excellent bookmaking tool and it helps you get that nice and squash down and I do that while I'm standing up so I can put all my weight on it. I fold all the papers together because if you fold them individually, then they don't seem to stack in tight and they step out here at the end. I fold them all together at the same time, and now I have one section of my book. And so I can see that this is going to be part of the cover. Now I've opened to a watercolor page, and then I've got the watercolor page and a book page, got a decoration, handmade paper page, watercolor page. Then I've got a double spread watercolor page, which I love those. Then I've got a watercolor and a paper. Then I've got a watercolor and when you open it to the center, you have a double spread. I'm feeling really good about this. I'm not looking for perfection and because I've torn all the edges. I like the hand to edge feel of that. Line them up as best you can and then you are ready to go. Because the piece that I was using as my template wasn't completely straight, these papers are not completely straight. It adds to that lovely handmade quality. Oh, yes. I've got two papers already going. I'm going to get two. I may go ahead. We're going to see how thick this is. Pick a paper, and then two of these. And then pick a paper. I really like this one, and then watercolor in the center. I've got should have five, one, two, handmade, one, two, handmade, and that. Your handmade papers could be things you paint. Could be things that you made, could be old papers, could be tissue paper, jelly plate prints that you created. I mean, you can get pretty creative on what that center section might be for you, what those pieces might be that you're treasuring. Snotypes, could be cyanotypes. Oh, yes, that gives me a good idea right there because I do snotypes. Then now we have two book sections. How amazing is that? I like any ones that stick out, anything that adds to that Yummy hand madness. I love it. I'm going to pick a paper. I want want these papers to be in the same sections perhaps. I'm going to put two papers, pick a paper and then the top paper. You can straighten those up as you're going. One, two, three, four, paper. Okay. Just count to make sure. Really press those down. They're Section three. I did notice too on some of these packs of paper, this paper sticks together. Some of them have more than 20 sheets, I think. You might get one or you might get 19. I don't know. I feel like they don't come with the exact number sometimes because the papers stick together. Okay, look at that. I love it. I'm actually going to. I've got some paper underneath my table or one of these that I did and I didn't use all the paper. I think I'm going to go ahead and do the fifth section. And just make this extra big. I don't know. That's pretty big. I'll do it anyway. I've got some extra paper under the table here. Let's just see what I got. Just to show you too, you could have done. I put this over here, to make this extra big. You could have done painted on those, and that could have been a page. Because look at that. I could go ahead and put this in. That could be one of my pages. Why don't we do that? Then it's already painted. Then let's just use that. But you see how you can go ahead and paint these. You don't have to have extra papers. You could paint some of these papers and just have yourself a go or start, or you know what else you could do because a lot of people and myself included 23, four, good five. I actually got two extras. I got extras. I like it. I got extras. A lot of people, myself included, are almost afraid to use the book because then you start thinking, Well, I don't want to mess it up. I don't want to Do something and then totally ruin all the work. There's that page. You see what I did there, I did to two watercolor papers for the outside, I did a pretty hand made paper. I did a watercolor paper and a watercolor paper, but this one's already decorated. That'll be a fun. We don't have to do anything with it surprise piece on the one side, but the other side will still have to paint, but it'll be it's already done in there. A lot of times we're afraid to get started in the book. What if you painted all your pages first, and then put the book together. Then you're not hemmed in by working in the book. You're not afraid to mess a page up because you've picked all the pages that you already love and put that book together. Now with the page that I just picked, it's only painted on one side, because it's painted on one side, let's find where it went. Look what that one's going to be Oh, my goods I want them so much. This is one of my very favorite paintings, too. I would frame that painting. But you know what? I'm going to go ahead. I treasure this painting. This is my treasured handmade papers. I'm going to go ahead and let that be part of my book. I'm going to grab a clamp because I'm going to cut the cover while we're over here on our cutting table before we go put the stuff together. What I'm going to do is clamp these together enough to get my book page size for the cover, so I'll be right back. I got two clamps. One thing too, while you were looking at the edges of our paper here, I have very obviously done these in a rainbow. As I was putting them together. You need to decide what paper do you want to be in the front section and the back section, and how do you actually want those to look as as you line them up and you could have used the same handmade paper on every section. I chose to do a different handmade paper in every section to really make it super interesting as I was painting and looking through it later. I thought, let's do it. But you can use the same rotation of papers like we did in our inspiration journal that we did in the artisanal journals, or you can do the different papers in this collection because I really do love that each section has different pages. It's exciting just to look through and look at the pages. Here is our book, and just for the moment, I am getting them together so that I can cut our cover. No other reason at the moment beyond that. I've got the chipboard, which is the book board stuff. This is ten chipboard sheets that came in here. For this size book, I'm going to use two sheets because an odd size and going in this a way. If I go just that way, I could do the whole book with that, but look how short it is. I'm going to cut two covers out of two pieces, and I want these to be just a smidge bigger than the book. If I put this on top, right about there, actually just for this pet part, I could just take one section, but I'm going to line it up and look at it. I want there to be a I want it to be slightly larger on this side. I'm looking for my pencil. Here we go. I'm just going to mark this with my pencil. But I want it to be slightly larger. I'm going to offset from the other side how much larger I want it to be. I only want it to be say a quarter of an inch bigger because I want that little bit of lip on the front, it's not going to matter on the back. I'm giving myself a quarter of an inch up here and here to give me that measurement there. Then I'm just going to mark that with my pencil. Then I'm going to cut both sections that size. I need my cutting mat. I need a sharp knife. Here's my cutting mat, and I need my ruler. I'm going to cut these out. I've got a sharp utility knife. This ruler here, I got this at the **** Blick. It's nice if you can go and look at rulers in person. I like this because it's got a little grip where I can hold my fingers right there, a little grip hold, and it's got a grip on the back so that it doesn't move around. Now I can line the ruler up with that pencil mark that I just created. I'm going to do more than one swipe on this because you want to have one swipe is not enough, and so you want to hold it sturdy and do more than one strike, more than one pass, but you want to be real careful and a nice sharp blade. Just don't be in a hurry. Just pull that along and then go right back and do it again. And you'll see when it releases. It's thicker than paper, but it's not so thick that you can't cut it really easily. If you have some sketchbooks, let me grab a sketchbook. If you have a sketchbook, like I have the Honamul sketchbook pad of watercolor paper, this back section is the same stuff, maybe even a smidge thicker. That is fantastic for your bookboard. If you just want to cannibalize your sketchbooks, for the back pad, the watercolor pads, for that back piece, that I've used that in a couple book covers. You don't always have to buy this stuff separately. You can use the back of those. Then I'm going to go ahead and cut this. Right there. These don't have to be I do want the cover to be perfect, but I don't mind the book pages not being perfect. I do try to be a little more careful with the cover. Now, I'm going to go ahead and use my pencil and mark the same size on the second sheet. Then I don't throw these extra pieces away. I just put them in my stash. They're big enough to do something. You could do miniature books and stuff like that with it, so they're not not wasted, don't throw them away. I'm actually going to cut the short side first because I want to use this as my spine. You're going to put two covers in a spine. Once you make one of these and see how easy it is to make your own amazing sketchbook or art journal or book to work in, you'll want to make some more. Now I'm obsessed, which is why I have a second workshop of more ideas because I'm so obsessed with making books and I need to do things when I'm in the mood to do it so that The next time I'm in the mood to do it might be three years from now. If I do these while I'm in the mood and do as many as I would want to do. Then I got enough beautiful books to work in for years. I'm just clamping this together for a moment to see what the spine size is. I can see that the spine is a little bit larger than my four sections clamped together. What I'm going to do, I want this to be A the same width as that. I just marked on here about what that size is. Let me just double check or even a smidge smaller, it doesn't have to be completely wall to wall because if it's too big, it almost feels wide, which is why I thought I could have put another section in here because I made that o wide, but not really. So thinking like the width of these things and maybe just like a millimeter less, and then I'm going to cut that. I'm going to line up on one of these lines here. Right there on that line. To get it straight, I could have draw the mark all the way down, but I'm working on things with lines on it, so let's use those lines. We've got extra board if we do it wrong, not a big deal. There we go. That's going to be my spine. This is my spine. Then here's the extra stuff. You see, we have enough there to be spines to be small books. I have enough there for two covers and another spine for a smaller book. I'm just going to save all those yummy little pieces. Then this here is our book cover spine. I'm going to go ahead and trim the piece that I want to use. Piece of paper I want to use. I'm going to cut that. So I'm not going to assemble this yet. I don't want to assemble this until I get the papers done until I get the spine sewed together. But I could go ahead and just give myself plenty of space. This is basically the way that's going to assemble. Let me see if I can See, even this table is not big enough. I need all the space. I need so much space. Basically, I'm going to have cover about a quarter of an inch, the back piece, a quarter of an inch and the other piece. I want to have about an inch and a half to 2 " of extra space around here. I'm leaving about 2 " at the top, and then I also want to leave about 2 " on the side. Because this is the pretty handmade paper, I'm going to go ahead and just use my rip ruler to rip it and give myself that extra space. I don't have to be perfect. These papers are not straight. I mean, they they're close. They're not perfect. But I'm leaving myself enough room that it doesn't matter. I'm going to have plenty of space. I just want it to be the hand cut edge because I like it. That way it's hand cut on the one I tore off to. Then that will be my cover. Now I'm ready to start sewing and assembling. That is how I cut all the pieces for the book, and then the book will have a cover. How cool is that? I'm going to move over to my desk and we'll start sewing this and assembling this and be all set. 6. Treasure Journal - Sewing Signature Sections: All right. I've got all the sections ready. We need to decide to, do we want all the papers coming out the front or the bottom in the way that we've got them done because you can always flip some over and decide if you want them going a different direction because the way I drew them and cut them, they might all be sticking out one side, which I'm okay with that, but you might not be okay with that. You got to look at these and think, do I want them come in different directions so that it's an equal amount showing on each end. That's cool. Yeah, I like it like that. Then what I'm going to do. This is really important because I tend to get stuff all over the place and move stuff around and flip things over and then they get out of order. Once you start poking your holes in your spine, you want them to all go the same direction that you did when you poked the spine. I'm just going to come here and draw a number on each of these so that they stay in order in the way that I wanted them, and then they stay in order on the way that I've arranged them right here. Then I'm going to come to the end and I'm going to draw some lines. I'm just going to get it as even as I can. And make sure that they're lined up the way that I want them to line up because now we are going to take our ruler. And the long end here is 12 ". I'm going to mark this in the center at six, and then I am going to go 2 " and 2 ", and I'm going to come this way, 2 " and 2 ". My set of threads, you're going to stop about 2 " from the end. You can go out further. If you want, that's just my che, my choice there. I'm just going to take a little straight ruler that I have and then don't get them, don't move around here, signatures. I'm just going to take this straight ruler, and I'm going to draw a line all the way up. If it helps to hold them down a little bit, you can do that. But I'm going to draw a line all the way up and now I want these all to stay in the same order so that wherever I put these holes will line up as I'm sewing. I'm so excited about this book, you can't even know, Oh my gosh, it's going to be gorgeous. These are exciting when you start making them, and you've picked out the papers and you've picked out the custom bits and the ways you're going to customize this to be exactly something that you want. If you try to buy a journal that somebody's made like this, they're expensive because some people do make journals like this and then sell it on ts. I've got my basic bookmaking kit here. The few that I found are hundreds of dollars. You got to figure if you're going to the extent that I went on this with the handmade papers, it was about $34 for the watercolor paper, and then each of these handmade papers was seven or $8 each, and if I use ten of those, that's $80 because I had five sections plus the $34, so $114 plus my little bookmaking kit that I got off of Amazon, which has my all, my bone folder, some needles. This one came with a little bit of thread and a second bone folder, and it came with a roll of thread. I've hid the thread from myself. Oh, it's on the table over there. I've got some other thread though. I'm going to be using waxed thread. I'm using waxed linen, and I like this white one in this set. But this bookmaking kit that was like eight bucks on Amazon, seven or $8. It was super cheap, came with a thing of thread. Let's pretend that's it for the moment because the threads on the other table. That's like everything you need right there. That you're sewing it, poking the holes, and flattening out these sections like we did. It's a fantastic little kit. I'm like, look it. Now we're going to poke some holes. I'm going to move these to the side. I've got them numbered, so they'll stay in order when we start to sew. What we're going to do, let's grab all the pages here. It's easier if you come back and fold it this way backwards so that you can then pick each hole, and then at an angle, go through and you can make sure that your needle is coming through on the spine correctly. I just poke that all the way through. I want that to be a good size hole. Again, you can check and see where it's at. If it came out way off to the side, It's not ruined. I have a book where they came off to the side and I realized it when I was sewing and I'm like, Oh, When I go to paint that page, I could just collage on top of it, I can paint on top of it. It doesn't matter. Don't get upset if you have two holes on something where it got off of the center because you can just paint or something on top of it. If it's a little off of the center, I don't worry too much about that. But in the center is best, because somehow I always get that center hole a little bit off. That one's way off, so that's why we come in at an angle. Be careful not to poke your finger like I just did. M go ahead and do the last one. It's better if you're coming in at the angle. It's hard to not get in the way of the filming if I'm doing it this way, but see if you come in at the angle, you're on the right spot. There we go. See, I'm going to have an extra hole here, but I don't even care. I can just paint it, I can collage over it, I can smooth it out. When I'm painting in the book, you'll never know it's there. I don't want you to get upset about it, but it is better if you come in at a 45 degree angle just like that. Then once you've got your holes punched, you've got your number on here so you can remember which was the correct direction. Go ahead and fold that back the direction that it was supposed to be. You can do a little extra bone there if you want. But we have our holes ready to sew. And you got to be careful, I might have got them off of out of line there, doing all that moving there with that paper, but we can line it back up there, and we're going to be ready to sew. Now I'm going to do the next one. Let's do number two. Just going to fold it this away. Then I'm going to go in at an angle. You can see I've come out on the spine. Might not be perfect. It's okay. That one's perfect. Because when we get to sewing, it's not such a deal if it's completely perfect or not, we're going to make it work. Now, you want to go the same direction, though. If you flip it over, you're coming out that way instead of that way. I'm just thinking as I'm going, where am I coming out? You want to keep on going in the same direction as you're going even if it's an awkward sized book. That one's not where I want it in the center. There we go. That one is. Then we'll just fold that back over. Flatten those back out real good. And we're ready to do the third one. You can see perfection is not necessary. Do as good as you can and don't get hung up on it being off or to the side or at different. Do the best you can. Don't make this harder. Then it needs to be. Because I know we can all make everything as hard as possible right there in the center. Just take your time, go in at an angle, perfect, work your way down. Perfect. By the time you've got more than one, say you're on your second or third one. Perfect. You'll start to nail them. Don't get don't get hung up or frustrated on the poke in the whole bit. All right back the way it came. Just going to fold it down and that again. That was number three. I'm going to finish up the last two. All right. I've got all five of these one, got a tiny bit off on my middle holes. That seems to be my challenge is the hole in the middle. Now I've got them all lined back up again with the way I numbered them, one, two, three, four, five, and I'm going to start with number one, and I'm going to use a waxed thread. If you use a regular thread without waxing it, the thread Seems to tear the paper serious like just linen thread. I've got some plain linen thread, and you can wax it yourself with bees wax by just running the thread over the bees wax. What a pain, you can do it and it's really not that bad. Or you can buy thread that's already waxed in several different colors. You can find waxed thread anywhere that has bookmaking materials. I'm just going to make this thread about the length of my arm. Then I'm going to double that because I'm going to double this thread. It's going to be a double thickness. Then that'll give me enough to pull to be able to pull without pulling multiple times, maybe. If you buy the wax thread, it's like super waxed. It's so waxed, it's almost stiff and we'll stay whichever way you put it, and then I'm going to thread my needle. I'm going to sew this with a double layer of thread, so it's good and strong. This is a great big needle used for book binding. It's huge. It's got a sharpish point, but not super sharp, it's a tiny bit dull and the head is big enough to get that gigantic thread in it. I like all my knots to be personally on the outside, so I'm going to knot this. Just going to do that and roll it down my finger. Try to roll it down my finger. It's very thick. I'm going to not this up. Then that's going to be on the outside. I'm going to start with one end, and we're just going to be able to poke our needle through the holes that we created and you can do it layer by layer if you can't find the holes to go all the way to get it started, but it gets easier as you're going, just get each of those threaded on. Where is this hole? I just saw it. There we go. I do find it nice to have a thimble handy because you need to be able to push that needle sometimes. I've got one handy even if I don't have it stuck on my finger the whole time, and we're just going to pull that first thread. These tend to I don't know, in on themselves a little bit. It's real thick. We're just going to pull that through, I've got the knot on the outside, and then we are ready to find the next hole and pull it back to the other side. You can see, find the hole, it goes right through, and I'm going to pull this all the way through and make sure I don't have any weird loops where the thread got stuck and just pull it tat, but not so tough that I'm tearing paper or anything like that. Then we've got the third hole here. There we go. Again, I'm just pulling it all the way through and pulling it taunt. Then right through the fourth hole here, make sure I'm not causing myself or not. Then there we go right through the back. Just make sure you don't leave any looping here on the front. Then we're going through the last hole. Nice and then you can see we've got, here, and then we're going to come back and go the other direction and go in that hole. And then we're going to go down to the next hole and we're going to go through that hole again and pull through to the inside. We're going to have a steady rope of thread all the way down. Then we're going to find this hole it gets tough, so it might be nice to have a thimble to help you push that than tear up your fingers. I have a couple of thimbles, but who knows where they are? I actually bought myself a new thimble when I was out the other day because I'm like, I need a thimble. I need that thimble. Now I'm just going to move this not out of the way, and I'm going to go back in that very first hole so that I'm on the inside. You can see now while having a great big punched hole helps because this thread is thick and it's got the wax on it, and you're going to need to go through the holes more than once on this first layer. Now I'm just going to it off, I just came up underneath that thread and made a loop and I'm going to go back through my loop and pull that tight. And now I've made myself a knot, and I can double not it. I can either pull that back through the back or I can leave that right there because this stuff is so thick, I'm just going to leave it right there and that's going to live there and I'm going to paint it in probably at some point, and then the back side even going to case. I'm just going to leave that right there. Now we're ready to go to number two. Number two, I want to be in order. Number one was on top, number two a second. I want that to be in order of how I drew those lines on the back. I'm getting short on thread here. I think I'm going to go ahead and string one more piece of thread and then that piece of thread might get me through most of the rest of these, but it doesn't matter. We can just attach it and tie it. It's not a big deal. I just tie things on the outside so that you don't see it because we're going to put a binding on top of that and you won't even see it. Don't worry if it looks neat on the outside, don't worry about that. Your goal is to just get it sewed and I like it to look neat on the inside. I just don't worry about the outside. Again, about the length of my arm is what I'm going for here, but I can add another piece if I need to, not a big deal. And I like that this color is about the same color as the paper I'm using. That's what's nice about having different colors of waxed thread. You'll see that this package here had brown and black in it. This's just waxed linen thread. I got it at Amazon years ago. I've had that for a while I bookmaking classes years ago. Those are fun online. There's a book membership out there that I'd seen. Now what I'm going to do is I am going to attach these two and because I have cut off that thread, which maybe I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have cut that thread off, but I did. I'm actually going to not this on to this piece and keep going. I could have already had that on there and kept going. I'm just going to pull through that knotted loop there and pull that tight. And pretend that that was still attached because I want this down here to attach to the next piece. That's how I'm going to do that. Because now I'm going to attach the two together. Now I'm going to go through the whole on the second book, and I'm going to flip it over so I can see them. Here we go. I'm just going to pull it tight, but not so tight that I'm going to rip out what I just did or tear that section that I just created. Then I'm going to head back through with my needle. There we go. Then I'm going to pull that tight just like I did on the other. I'm going to make sure I don't have any extra little loops here. Pull it taut and there we go. Now what we are going to do to attach section two to Section one is I'm going to come onto this side of where that hole is and then come back out the other side of that hole. You see I just looped it under that thread there, I'm just going to make that loop that attaches those two sections and pull it, and then I'm going to go back through that hole that we just came out of to the inside. There we go. That would be a good spot to have that thimble. And now, just pull it taut, just double check it, make sure it's not got anything weird hanging out. And then we're ready to go down to the next hole. So I just went in that third hole. I'm going to pull it out here on the top. And then I'm going to go under that thread on one side of the hole on the first section and then back through underneath on the second side, and then we are just going to pull that nice and tight, making that little loop there, holding those two sections together. You see why I' numbered them. I turn these all around and by the time I'm done, I don't remember what was up and what was down and what was section, whatever. Definitely good to number them so that you still get them all in the same order and just pull that tight, and then we're ready to go through the next hole, perfect, and then Make sure I don't have any weird loops inside because the waxed thread, it just gets hung up. Then we're going to go under that thread on one side over here, come back out over here on this other side. Pull it taut there and then back through that hole. After you've done a couple of these, man, it gets so easy, you just do it like you have always been doing it. Now for this one, I'm going to just loop through here. And I'm going to be ready for the next section. Now I'm going to go to the number three. Let's see how these go. I got one. Then I've got number two marked over here. There's number two, and then here's number three. I'm going to make sure that I get it same direction, even though I'm flipping this all around. Now I'm going to go directly into take that same thread that I've already still been working with, and I'm going to go right down to the first hole in number three, and there we go came right through. It gets easier. Then I'm going to come out the second hole. I'm going to jinx myself by telling you it gets easier. Let's see where my needle is in here. There it is. There we go. Ah, lovely. All right. Once you find that hole, pull that through. Perfect. I've got some of that one of those brown papers on my thread, but I don't care. Now we're going to do this a little tiny bit different because I actually want that a little tighter coming from that first section there. There we go. There we go. Now, because we don't want to go back to the first section and loop around. What I want to do here is just 1-2. I want to just go up under the loop that I have created and get that needle up under there. And if you do the under there and then push it through, you can angle it up a bit. There is half round needles that are easier to work with to do that little underneath that loop de loop. But I don't have the little round needle, but that's how we're going to make that next little line. We're going to go up underneath those two strings of thread for our catch. Then back through the same hole that we just came through I came back in a different spot. Don't get upset if you make an extra hole. Just remember, you can paint it, can collage over it. It's not a giant deal. Just work it until you find it. Then just pull that. Don't pull it so tight that you're making a mess, but it. Then a third hole. I've got so many pieces of paper that I'm doing that might be the challenge, but then there's the third hole. Make sure there's no weird loops inside. Then we're going to come back here to this and we're going to loop right up underneath. This one. Number one and two, we're going to loop underneath that. I'm just going to pull it down so I can There we go, grab that needle. Just be super careful here. You're working with a needle. You don't want to poke yourself, you want to be real careful, loop around and then back down through that hole so that we can come out the next loop. Op. That was easier. And then just pull it taut and see how we're making a lovely little spine there. Here we go. So just take your time with the stitching. It's no hurry. I'm just going to go through this. Between that loop on one and two, I'm just going to go down. There we go. If you just can't get it, just open the two sections and pull it through. There we go. You can definitely see where the half round needle though. Now I need to get a half round needle because I don't have one. I've made a dozen books now just like in the last week or so. Now I'm like, I need that. There's that one. We're going to come through the last one, do our loop and then we're ready for the next section. There we go. Then we will add another piece of thread after we've attached the next section. Here's the front. I've got one, two, three, Here's number four, going in the same direction because you see I'm all over the place. Then I'm going to take that thread right into the next section. Found it. Thank goodness. Then I'm going to come right out the second section. I found that one first. There we go. You can see each one you do it gets a tiny bit easier. I'm just going to go in between the loop here 2-3. I don't go back up to the one and two loop. I go to the loop I just created, and I'm going to just open this to help me get the needle back to the other side of it. There we go. Now I'm underneath the loop of two and three, and we're just going to do that each time. The next section will be this loop that we're going through. I'm going to go right back through our whole. And now I've got that locked into that section. Now I'm just going to go ahead and finish off this section, doing the same thing, looping it underneath the one in between it. It might be easier just to open the book to find the needle and go through underneath it because I have found that to be a little tiny but easier back through the hole. There we go. I might go ahead and add a piece on right now and just have a knot right here so that I can make sure I got enough to finish the last section and don't even bother me. You can try to put the knot somewhere else if that's going to bother you your choice there. I'm just going to tie these off and just leave it right here in the middle. You'll see a lot of books with like a little hind t right in the middle. It's pretty common, so I wouldn't even worry about it. Then I will trim those little edges in a bit. Then I'm going to come right through and attach to the next loop. And then right underneath the loop on the number three and four, and I'm actually going to open it up and just push that back rather than struggling with it. And I'm right through the loop. And then I'm going to go back through that hole and come through the last one. Then I'm going to loop around that little loop right there 2-3 again for that last one so that we're still looping around it, and now I'm ready to attach the last section. I'm going to put it back to the front. That's why it's nice to have numbers on these, so I remember what the front is. Then I'm ready to at. The last one. I've gone through the loop down there, I'm ready to come through the first loop here on number five. Let me find the center there we go. There we go. There we go. Right through the next hole here. It's almost easier if you go the same direction that you did your all so that it's kind of the same angle and it comes right through where it. Every time I pull my thread out, I knock something off my table. I'm going to go ahead and pull this one a little tighter because I can see it got loose here on the edge. I'm just trying as I'm going to make sure that each piece gets pulled taut, and I'm not leaving any weird straggler out there. I'm going to get in here between these two sections so I can see it there we go. Now I'm going between the loop of number three and four, and I can do that this away and get my little attachment there. Then I'm going to go back through that hole that I came and just pull that tight. You can see I've made a n set of basically c looking stitches. There we go. I just double check inside every time because I've done it where I didn't double check and then something didn't do right and I had a big weird loop in the middle of a book. I'm just going to go under that loop, going to open this so I can just grab my needle. This really does make it easier. Come back to the other side of that loop so that I can just that through the loop. There we go. Same as if I were trying to struggle and do it this way back through the loop that we just came through. Back through the hole, we just came through, sorry. I got loop on the brain and just pull that tight. Then through the next hole. There we go. And again, I'm just going through that loop between the last two sections and just pushing it back through here since I don't have a curbed needle and made a nice little loop there around that one. And then back through that hole that we just came out of. And here we are getting to the very last one. G. Then pull that tight and make sure. And then we are ready to loop through that last hole and now I'm going to make a knot by looping through the loop I just created, and I'm going to make a double knot because that's not actually a knot on that first little loop that I just did, so I'm going to do it again. I'm going to go under that, and I'm going to come through the loop I just created and pull that down so that knots up, and then I'm just going to trim that off and we have bound our piece. Now, You could leave it like it is, but every time you got to a new section of the book, it's going to open up and have a gap, and that drives me insane. I don't want the gap. What I'm going to do is I'm going to glue this. I'm going to cheat a little. I'll show you what I'm going to do because I have some book binding tape. I did this on another book and it worked out fantastic. I have some book repair tape. You could probably use Gaffers tape or it's going to be on the inside. You're not going to see it. You might get away with some other tape. But I'm going to use my big clamps. Clamps are handy. If you're sprayed to damage the paper that's on the outside, you can put a little piece of wood in between the clamp and the paper. But this paper is very thick, and this is going to be the inside book flap, so I'm not going to see it if it leaves a dent, so I'm okay with that. I've got some PVA glue, which is the correct glue for this, and I also have some ileens Alan's original acid free tacky glue. If you're going to use tacky glue, which is another popular book binding glue. It dries clear. It does not yellow because it's acid free. Don't get the regular tacky glue. The regular tacky glue is not acid free. You want to get the acid free tacky glue, and I had to order it because I did not see that in stock locally here. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to glue the binding, which is why I have clamped it. Then once I glue the binding, I'm going to cheat and take a piece of book tape, so I'm going to go ahead and get the right length. This is just going to be a double whammy for us because I want to go ahead and make the book cover. I want it to be maybe just a tiny bit shorter than the book. I don't want this hanging outside of my book. I might cut a tiny bit off. But this is going to cheat the system because basically what you normally would do is glue this and let it sit overnight. But I want to go ahead and make the cover today, I'm going to cheat because I did this the other day and it works great. I'm going to cut these off. I don't need these long, little. You could just weave these backwards too, but I'm just going to cut these a little shorter. Look how beautiful our spine looks. What I'm going to do is run glue on the spine in between, which is why I wanted it clamped, that I want the glue to keep going, but I do want the glue to glue these two pages together. When we open it, we will have a nice closed book. I did that on this one. Let me just show you what that looks like. I didn't want that big gap between the two. When you get to the two pages, this is exactly how my Dina Wakey book works also. There's a glued page, but it's not open where you can see down to the spine. Now I can paint it as if it were to one big layout like a big double spread. Let me show you the Dana Wakey one, and then you will see what I'm talking about. This is the commercial made one. In between, they have the craft paper pages. Those are glued and you can see I've done exactly what they've done there. In between every section, they've got craft paper pages and that's how it makes the spread and you don't see through the cover. I have watercolor pages that I've done, and so that's going to be where mine is. I'm basically going to glue the spine. This glue dries clear, I'm not worried about it, and I'm just going to go down the edges for a nice bead of glue. Then ideally, let that dry overnight, definitely let it dry overnight before you try to use it or open it, just let it do its thing. But that's how we're going to get our connected pages that don't open to the spine. I've used that whole thing of that tacky glue. Sorry, that PVA book glue. I used the whole thing, and I would say that that for me made five to six books. That's how much glue was in there. If you're going to make a whole bunch at one time, just know that's about how far it goes. That's exactly what I wanted to do there. Now I want to enclose the glue basically with my book tape. You're not going to see it, and it's going to give me a chance to make an attach to the cover and then set it up over to the side to dry overnight. That's how I cheat. If I want to keep on going and make the book all in one go. Now I'm going to set this to the side and just let it be setting up because it'll set up pretty quick, give it half an hour, an hour, and it'll be set up pretty good, so you don't have to do this if you don't want to. It's just my extra cheat. I'll set this to the side while we make the cover. 7. Treasure Journal - Finishing Cover & Book: Let's go ahead and make the cover. I got a couple little things that you might consider. If you want to do a book that has the elastic on it like this here, and you want to be able to elast that book like that. You'll need to have some elastic as you're making the cover. We can look at this and it actually you can't see where it is under here, but they've got a hole on the cover just big enough to thread this through. Then I can tell that there is a piece of elastic right here. I can see it up underneath the book cover. They have just glued that in place and then glued the paper on top of it. That's how that is attached. Basically what you want to figure on is this to be the whole length of your book, the whole length of this plus maybe 2 " extra on each end to then thread that back through. So look at some of the books that you already have and think, I like this feature or I like that feature. Another feature that this little sketch book has is a piece of ribbon. Do you like to have a little ribbon in your book to keep track of where you're at? That is just glued down to the spine itself. As I was doing the glue there on that spine, and I could still go back and add it. We could have a little piece of ribbon. In there if we wanted and then you could attach charms to the ribbon if that was your thing. That's some stuff for you to think about. You could also have a pretty piece of ribbon that wraps the whole piece and keeps it closed when you're not using it, that's something to consider. If you're going to do that, you need to figure on having enough ribbon coming out of one side, so underneath maybe glued to the spine. Then enough to wrap around. Actually I'm wanting a wrap around ribbon on this. Let me go grab a piece of ribbon. I grab some ribbon. I found this at the hobby lobby the other day, I just thought it was beautiful and I'm thinking that I want to do a wrap around in this color. It's a pretty gold. It's like a pretty satin ribbon. It's really pretty. I don't know, it's a good choice? It's got some thread on it. I'm not sure what that thread bit is. Maybe that's just to keep it from fraying more. But I like it, so we're going to use it anyway. I'm going to want to decide how much of this thread that I need based on the book. I've got the book here, it's over there just drying, do I want to loop it around? Do I want to have a button on the outside, that I can then loop this around. Do I want it to just loop around a couple of times and then slip underneath so that that keeps it firm? I don't know. Let's get enough to loop around a couple of times and then we'll decide. Real exact there? It's your art book. You just go with whatever it is you're feeling. I'm going to actually attach this, glue this in after I've taped all this. Let's do this. What I'm going to do is glue stick because they're easier. Ideally, it would be nice if you had acid free glue, this is a UH U stick. It doesn't say acid free, but it's on the inside. Got it at it's a natural glue. I got it at the **** Blick the other day because I'm like, I love glue sticks. You can do this with the PVA glue, which in the artisanal journals class. That's what I did, and I spread the glue around, but man, it's a pain. There we go. Doesn't matter if I've got a little on the edge because I'm going to flip it right over and get it where I want it and see if we've got it straight. I can check it here. We like that. Go to go ahead. Smash that down pretty good because it's glue. That's going to allow the cardboard to warp a little bit later. We're going to put this under a stack of books when we're all done and let that really set up and dry overnight. Let's just glue stick this one. I want to leave about an eighth of an inch, quarter of an inch. We can check this I want it to be all even there, and I want one to be shorter than the other, but we can check that with our book. And just see, did I leave enough room for that? If I put that there, did I leave too much room? We can just check and see, we get going there? Then that right there would have right there. Yeah. That's what I want. I know the clamps are in the way, but now I've made several of these and I can boil it a little bit. Then if it's starting to work a little right now, don't worry about that, you're going to set that under heavy books overnight. It will flatten and look gorgeous tomorrow. Just don't get super hung up on some of this. Again, about a quarter of an inch. Making sure I get it level with the other two pieces. Or as close as you can get, and then because there's a bit of leeway, don't get super upset or stressed. Then I'm going to cut these edges. Let me close that up. I'm going to cut these edges, and I'm going to cut it at an angle like a little V shape and I'm going to leave about a quarter maybe an eighth of an inch. I need to leave ale bit of extra paper outside the co edge here because You don't want to cut to the cardboard. You need that little bit of extra so that when we fold this down, it makes a nice corner. Again, I'm just coming in at a little y, leaving myself a little bit of space there. Then we are going to take some more glue and we're going to glue this. If you feel like it didn't glue good enough on the edge or something, you can you could use I didn't get to the edges on these. You've got a few minutes and you can add a little extra glue. But when you're all done, I don't think you're even going to notice it after it dries overnight. I've got some wax paper over here. I can put under this to try not to get it all over my desk, which I did not put down today, but I've got it over here. I'm going to work edge to edge because if you work here here here, then you might pull the paper and you might not, but you might. I'm working opposite ends together. I'm just going to pull this edge doesn't have to be super neat when you're done like the inside, doesn't matter what the inside looks like because you're not going to see it. I feel like I might have grabbed the crooked spine rather than the straight spine, but that's okay. I feel like that wasn't the straight one. Just flip this over. And we're going to just glue this side. God. You can see how it made a nice corner on all four corners. Now I'm ready to attach the book and then all of these are going to be glued down together. I'm going to take the clamps off for now because it's had a little bit of time to set up. I'm going to use the tacky glue to to glue this to this. The very first watercolor page of my signature and the last watercolor page, that's going to be the inside of my flap. So tutorials have that inside flap being a book. Like a decorative paper for a book cover or whatever. I just use this stuff. I just use this. Nice thick thing of glue. I've got a little piece of paper here that I've folded in half that I used to spread the glue. Now, if you put the glue all over this and then glue this page down, you might have got the size incorrect. I like to put the glue on the paper. And that way, I know I've got the right size, the right amount of glue. I do have a little wax paper here. I can put it right in between here to make sure that I'm not spreading off any glue onto that second sheet as I try to get this to the edge because I do want that edge to edge. Then I'm just going to flatten this out. This is just that red paper that I was working on. I keep using this little piece of paper, so I just wipe the glue off of it. If I've got extra glue on it and I keep using it. It's fantastic. Now, I am going to set this where I want it. Hopefully. I'm going to look and see if it's really where I want it at the top. I want the same amount of space at the top and the bottom is what I'm going for. Then Am I straight on the spine or did I get it where it needed to be versus this side? I think I did. Now, I'm going to smooth this page down, which I can see is not perfectly straight, but that's okay. I've got enough of the book, which this paper might not have been straight. It's not that it's not straight or it might not have been straight in my signature, but I'm going to glue it down, I've got enough of the overlap where it's still going to cover like it and the book will close like it. I'm just going to let it sit right there for a second because I don't want to forget the ribbon. The ribbon part, we could attach right in here, go ahead and glue that in and then let it do its little wrappi things. Why don't we do that? Yes, I'm doing that. I'm just going to glue that right there. Now this is on the inside, so you're not going to really see that. But because I have this book tape, I think I'm going to cut an extra piece of this and really secure that in there, just as an extra bit there. Now we're ready to glue this one down. I'm just going to again real quick before the spine dries there, I'm going to layer this whole thing with glue. And you've got a minute of working time here with this, but you don't have a whole lot of time. So don't dilly dally too long. I'm going to go ahead and get this down there on that piece of paper. Get this right over here. This is a sturdy book we're making a book that's going to last our lifetime. If you love making the books so much, you can have a little side hustle making these books for people because people will pay good money to do all this, thinking it's too hard. I know it was very lengthy here making this one because I was talking at the same time, but if you get on a little roll, you can do this. Okay. Now, we are ready. I'm going to go ahead and slip this in here for the moment, but we are ready to go ahead and get this page attached. I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to open it and look at it and really smooth that down good. And we could grab our bone folder, that would help. You can see we've got our ribbon going, I might come over here with the bone folder just to make sure. We've got anything flattened out. I don't want air bubbles or anything like that. Then I didn't really do that on the spine, but when we were gluing it, we could have done this with the cover also to make sure there was nothing going on with the cover that we glued. And then come in here with our little finger on that little edge that we created between the spine and the other piece, and there we go. Now, we're going to have to let this definitely sit overnight and dry. But look at our amazing book and I have a yummy ribbon that I can now loop around a couple of times and I can come through here as we're working and that's now closed and look how gorgeous this is. Oh, my gosh. Totally ended up exactly like I wanted. Now you're going to stack this under of just a heavy book or two overnight and let that dry and it will be completely perfect. Then look at how many yummy gorgeous pages that we've got to now work in and have some cool variation. So I hope you enjoy making one of these, can't wait to see what unique things that you include in yours. I'll let this dry overnight, and I'll see you guys back in class. 8. Art Folio - Supplies: Take a look at the supplies that I'm using in our folio that we're going to create. We're going to create this lovely little folio of art. In here, I've got different types of paper, gathered art, old papers, little envelopes that I have attached in here to store some art. I've got tissue paper runoff from when I cleaned off stencils, I've got some handmade papers. I have some vintage paper in here that I have saved. I also at the back of here, have a pretty vintage looking page that I have used, but it's not really old, it's a photocopy basically of a page from an old book. Then I have used a folio that had a photograph in it, that was an old photograph that I just tore out of there that I'll show you in class. Then I have finished this off with a lovely piece of ribbon that can then hold this folio shut. This is the project that we'll be making in class. The things that you want to gather for this project is something for the cover, and it doesn't have to be an antique piece of of an old picture thing like I have gathered. It could be, here's the picture that came out of it. It was just one of these old things that had a picture in it. I'll just save this for a later piece of art. I just tore it right out. I'll show you that when we get to the project in class. But you could use an old piece of art or a piece of art that you love and you want to be the cover. I've made mine like a nine by six size, I believe, I believe it's a nine by six. Yeah, nine by six. That is an average size for an art journal thing, that's the perfect size. If you've got a bigger piece of art, you might cut it down. You could just make yours bigger. You've got some choices there. Gather up pieces of art that you love, gather up some old papers. I've got some vintage papers. You don't have to do that. I'm just giving you options. I got pretty tissue paper. I've got some handmade papers that I gathered up. I've got some lovely pieces of art that I was willing to sacrifice. I don't end up using them in this one, but gather up pieces that you think you might want to put into your lovely little folio, and then we will create little signatures just like we did with the bigger art thing, but we're going to make this a nice single little folio. I also used a glue stick in this project. I used my book kit my book binding kit and I used some waxed threads. I've got all the waxed thread. I've got my needle. I used all of that here in this project and my bone folder. That's our basic tools right there for making a book. I did use all four of these tools. I also had some pretty ribbon that I decided to use for my closure. This the kind of closure I decided on, you can decide on your own closure if you see something you like better, if you don't have to have a closure if you don't want, or you can just wrap ribbon around it and that can be done. I thought it was interesting to have a grommet as my closure, it protects the paper since I tied the ribbon through it a little bit and gave the ribbon an anchor that hopefully when I unwrap the ribbon, I don't lose the ribbon, anchors it to the book. To do that. I have a grommet kit that I've just had for years and years. I got this at Home Depot a long time ago. This has a three eighth inch grommet and a half inch grommet. It has been so long since I had this kit out that I ended up using the larger grommet when I intended to use a smaller gramet. This kit, you've got all the pieces for the smaller one and all the pieces for the larger one, but if you hadn't done it in a while, You might mix up the pieces and cut a bigger hole than you intended. Then you're going to go with the bigger one. I also ordered a gramic kit. I ordered a gramic kit with these 38 inch grommets that didn't come in yet, but I think it's going to be very handy, which has a grip piece, which probably isn't good if you have grip issues or as we get older, we naturally lose our grip. This hammer one is good if you've got grip issues and I just found it at the hardware store. I use that in a hammer. And a glue stick. That's basically it. I gathered all my papers, we created a signature, we sewed it into our piece. We attached any extras that we wanted, and then we attach our closure. I want you to start gathering interesting bits, pieces, tissue, old papers, things that you've painted, and what it is that you'd want to have in a folio. If you've got one of these folio covers that came with an old picture in it, those are very interesting. I just found this at the antique store. I collected quite a few of these a while back from my photography steel life stuff and now I'm like, new life for these. And it's beautiful and I'm going to treasure it, so I don't even feel like I wasted it, but if you are afraid to use something like this, feel free to look at the Tim Holtz ideology of papers because these are nice and thick. I could have used this as a folio paper and if it weren't strong enough, I could glue this to a piece of watercolor paper and make it even stronger. I do like these Tim Holt's ideology papers and envelopes and some other little goodies that I showed you in class because I went to the hobby lobby and just found fun interesting things, which I actually intended to use one of these little color palettes here in my folio. I might pull that back out. But just lots of interesting bits and pieces that Maybe it would be easier on some of your first projects until you really get your groove and go and how you'd want to create it. These might be an easier way to go rather than sacrificing your real art or your real old papers or what have you. I'm to the point though where I'm actually making this for myself. I wanted to put in there the things I wanted in there. I didn't mind sacrificing the things that I sacrificed to make the art books. I'm really loving some of the stuff that I pulled together. These are so fast and easy that you can make 1 million of these and just have a lot of little beautiful artfolios in your studio. I hope you enjoyed this project, so I'll see you in class. 9. Art Folio - Gathering Papers: This project, I want you to gather lots of bits and scraps and whatever you have. I'm going to make a little art journal that's going to be mostly complete when we're done with it, I hope. Then I might have a few pages in it that I could still paint in and decorate. But I just want to give you some good ideas here. You want to gather anything that you're thinking might be cool in an art journal and I'm going to use something a little different for the cover of this one, or you could use actually was going to start off using a piece of art as my cover. If you've got a piece of art that you like that you want to maybe be the cover of your journal, go for it. But as I was digging around in all my stuff, I came across this old photograph folio, and I'm going to use this as my cover. It does have a really cool photo in it. I collected tons of old papers and photographs and things for photography props and stuff over the years. I am just going to hopefully just unattach this photo. There we go. Then I can glue something here on the background like an old paper or something to cover any edge that I just peeled. But I'm going to use this as my art journal art folio cover. And I've got an interesting idea for a clasp, so we'll get to that at the end. Then I'm just going to save this. I like old photographs. I might use it in another piece of art or something, but we're going to make a signature that we will then sew into our cover. This is fun and interesting. This is a standard nine by 12, that might not be standard, but nine by 12 size, which works perfectly here, you can see with some watercolor paper. I have pulled out my hoomul paper. I'm to have a couple sheets of that in it. It's the nine by 12 paper Cal press. It was the very end of a pad that I had sacrificed the back cover for a book. I've got a few pages of that and I think that would be fun to be able to then paint on those while they're in our book when we're done. Still attached here to its glue at the top. Then once you decide if you want a few pages to work on in whatever medium, whatever surface here, then start gathering other things that you might want to include in this particular folio. I'm going to sacrifice a really beautiful old document. I've got tons of the old documents because I used to scan these in and use as photoshop brushes and digital downloads. I've got a whole big box of these that I've collected over the years. If you want old documents, but you don't want to sacrifice a real old document. You can find old document downloads really easily and inexpensively on EtS. You can just download it, print it, and use it. This is the real deal for me because it means things to me. I've used these in my photography and my props and you see them under just about every photo that I take, I have a stack of old papers that line the table, and I love them. I'm going to use them. Also have the deli paper that I use all the time to protect things. This was some deli paper that has some excess paint from a stencil on it. I thought that was really cool, so I'm going to use that. Another one that had some excess paint from a stencil. So I love that. I've got some old art that I pulled out. I've got some pieces of handmade papers in my junk box of old art. This is a pretty piece of handmade paper. I've got some tissue paper that came wrapped around something that I had ordered from an art store, so I love that. Another piece of handmade paper. They don't all have to be the same size, but in the end, we're going to conform everything to this height. If I've got things that are bigger than that, I'll cut them down and if I've got things that end up being a little smaller than that, I will center that in my signature so that when you get to that page, it doesn't look odd. I've also pulled pieces of art that I actually love, like Love love, and so I might sacrifice these to something in the journal. If I wanted to, this could be something on the back page covering that part that I pulled the paper off of that could be just a interesting piece of art back there. Yeah, I'm going to maybe sacrifice a few pieces of art. If you want some old looking, I also pull these off my wall, and I like that These had a color palette that went with these paintings, and that would be neat if I could stick them in an envelope or something. I don't know. I'm just pulling some ideas together. Any kind of tissue papers, any papers that you like, Any handmade papers that maybe is in your collection, anything you've painted, any jelly plate pieces that you've done. If you don't want another idea for you, if you don't want to sacrifice old items or you don't want to sacrifice your art. I was at the hobby lobby and I actually I went crazy because I love these Tim Holt's ideology things, and I want to be able to use some of these in my art notebooks that I'm making, my art journals. I really like this file cards pocket. That was a good choice. Go look at the Tim Holt site or the Hobby lobby or something like that. I really love this idea of old photographs. I have a ton of old photographs of my mother and some of my family from when they were kids. But I don't want to use them and I want to sacrifice those in a piece of art so you could scan those in and print them out. But this is a nice way to experiment with that before you get into your own pieces because you could throw it away and you wouldn't even care. It's not important to you, but it's a whole package of fun photos that he's collected and put together for us. I love the idea of experimenting with that. If you've got something that you truly love that you created, you could put your own photos in there. Then I really love these because there are many file folders, and that is absolutely perfect for the book that we're creating. I might stick one of those in here. Because it's fun and it's interesting and it's different, and they look antique, so it looks like it's an old piece of paper, and old tags, those would be great. Slipped in to some of these little file card pockets. That's fun and you can paint on top of it and it can be part of your art. And I'm obsessed with this little pack because it has little color cards in it, which I actually really love, and I have a pack of these hiding somewhere here in my art room, but I bought another one because I'm like, Oh, I don't know where it's at and I need it. But I like that these are floral. I like that they have the color swatches in here, and I love that they're vellum. They are translucent. This one I probably will pull out and use. Then I love these old papers. If you don't have old papers here like mine that you are willing to sacrifice or you don't want to purchase it because they do get expensive. This is a package of lots of papers that fit that bill. You can fake it basically without having to spend on the real deal and have pretty papers. I like that the back side has a pattern, too, so they are double sided. I love this map. Oh, I love this. I love that one. Papers and invoices. If you have some old papers like I do, then definitely you can use those. Lo here, we could turn this into a flower book. With an old invoice at the back, but I love this because it goes with the floral pieces here in this transparent things, number two, Tim Holt's ideology package. Getting excited. I didn't actually open these and look at all of them. I do feel like we could definitely use some of these in our art book because I really love some of these options. There's a couple of these packages. This was backdrops um volume one and Volume four. Apparently, there's some more volumes in there that I didn't see because I'm thinking there's a two and a three out there. But this other one is also look at that. It's got color palettes in it. Oh. Okay. You can see a good variety. Where's the? There we go. Uh, fill in flowers and color palettes, apparently. This has got that that's from a book and I actually have a printed copy of that book, the can't think of the name of it at the top of my head. But those are from a well known book. Oh, my goodness. I love that. Okay, so I don't know if I'm ready to use that. Oh, look at here. We could sacrifice that to be the back page, maybe and just trim off to the right height, and that could be the back page. Okay. Super fun. So you can see that you can use a mix of your own stuff, art work. Purchased fun things. I like this package pocket cards because it's got little packages of cards, and you can make your own art cards, but it's fun sometimes if you've got something else to slip in that is just pretty that you like. I like this a little set of art cards. You could also just cut down old papers and old index cards and round the corners to that to be an art card also. You can see so many ideas. Some of this is idea generating items for me. Some of it I'm going to use. If I'm just looking around at the hobby lobby and I'm like, I'm going to or the Michaels or the art store or wherever, and I think, I'm going to remember that and then I'm going to think later, what was that that I saw? Look at these little ones here. Love that. I'm just not going to remember. I like the size. Sometimes I will just go ahead and purchase what it is I'm looking at that I like, and then I can use it for ideas and I can use it for art, but this is pocket cards by the Tim Holtz ideology, and those are super fun. We can slip those in those little pocket things. I really love this. This is velum envelopes of our recollections. I love about this is I love the idea of envelopes and pockets and things that maybe I could stuff stuff into a little book or something. I'm feeling like this is going to make its way to a page that I could either glue it on top and I could stuff stuff in it. I could cut I really like the closure on it though, but I could cut the tab off if I wanted to just be able to slip stuff in. I could also that could be the center of my signature and this could be a lip that just comes out on the other side when we get to it as we're flipping pages. That could be something in the signature that I could then stuff stuff in. Giving you some ideas here. If you've got some old envelopes, those are excellent for something like that. I am going to now decide on and cut up and make these into a signature. Let's just get started now that I've given you tons and tons of ideas of what we can do. I've also, I've got an interesting idea for, I'm going to cut this in half. Actually, I think I'll get my paper cutters that I don't mess up here. I've also got an interesting idea using some grommets for the clasps. Let's just go ahead and you start your gathering and stuff and getting ideas. I must have a dull blade or it's not all the way in. There we go. There we go. I might need to change the blade on my cutter, and I use those until there. Did. A, I'm going to use the in different spots of my signature. I'm going to go ahead and fold them. Then I'm thinking, I really love this right here. What I could do is I've got a gilletine cutter. I might guillotine these to the right height, and we'll see if that works. I think I like this one. I wonder if I can cut this. I might have just been the old paper that got stuck, but I want to cut this. Oh, it's a dull blade. Maybe if I flip it around. Going to have to hunt out the blades. I've got some. They're just going to be hiding. There we go. Good enough. Now, the nice thing about using a piece of art is the backside is still going to be something that you can use. I like that. Definitely going to have to change the blade out. We will do that. Some of these still bleed, so I got to be careful. These reactivate with water. So I don't want to get them to I don't want to get them wet. I'm thinking. So no sweaty hands. Thinking in the center. Maybe a piece of watercolor paper. So where did I put that? Right here? Once you pick out all of the ones that you think you're going to use, then you can start assembling stuff. Then you can decide on how thick you want your piece to be, but it can't be so thick that it doesn't fit into whatever you've decided to use as your journal because basically, we're going to get all the we're going to get the signatures made. Something like this would be a one signature, I believe because it's already got one big fold that's not wide enough for two signatures. Just need to decide what all do I want in this signature before I sew it in. Then I'm going to use that on the back. I love it, and I might put something here on the front because why not? We'll see. That's definitely what I'm going to put there. I just need to decide, what else are we putting in this little journal? I have my rip ruler here, if I've got something with a jagged edge, I could go ahead, tear that to something a little nicer. This is something that you can make 1 million of these. Just continue gathering and collecting. I'm going to leave this one edge jag cause I like it. That to the side. Kind of centered there. I also had some canvas here that I pulled out that I thought was pretty cool. That could be something that fits into a pocket. Yeah, you know, also, I wanted to use one of these. So let's pull out these envelopes. These are shiny though and feel like antique ones would not be shiny, but I'm just going to pull one out. This is the mini file folders. I'm going to use it anyway because I like it. You can take two index cards and wash tape them together. That's another thing that you could consider to wash tape on some of your pieces. It's very thick. I might use it anyway. Then I really like this one. The fun thing about something like this is basically done with a little extra painting, maybe. That's fun. If you don't like white paper like this, but I wanted some I could paint. But if you don't like white paper, you could tes stain some of these papers. That would be. Good. I'm feeling pretty good about this here. I need to decide. Do I want this to just be hanging out on one side or do I want it to be able to close in here? Because I could attach this to say one of these and I could put something in there. I could put it at the bottom of a page. That would be fun. I might do that. Do I have enough pages? I've got one, two, something in the center, three, four, a short one. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and an old paper in the middle is eight. Maybe I'll do another watercolor page in the center, and that'll give me one last page to paint. That's nine. Is that what I want in the center? All right, let's just think about this for a moment. I'm fill in that. That's nine pages and our cover. Nine, so it's 18 pages and a cover would be 20 is pages, and that's pretty cool and it's getting nice and full. I'm thinking that's a good amount for mine. All these other pieces that I've gathered, I'm going to set to the side. Then I want to contain this within our book here. I know that everything that I need to do needs to be the size of this watercolor paper, and then everything else needs to go away. So I'm going to give this a try. I've never tried it before. I'm going to try to be cut each one individually, but I'm going to try to just do this on my guillotine cutter and see. We'll see. I might not work. But some of these papers are so thin that I'm hoping it will. All right, cross our fingers. Oh, I worked. I love it. Okay. Let me flip it over so I can just get this other side. And then Ara a ah, look at that. Okay. I do love my guillotine cutter. You don't have to have that to do this obviously. But that did just make this nice and easy to cut these pieces, and then you can put these little pieces in your scrap box and you can keep on using them. I'm going to set these to the side. I'm going to go ahead, make sure everything is in as far as I can get it. Then I'm going to use my bone folder to really if this flat. The reason I do it all together is because if you do it all separately, then when they go in there, they tend to telescope out even further than this is telescoping out, and I could trim these so that they're nice and even in there, but I like when art journals have fun things that hang out. I'm leaving the edges there. I'm going to sew this together first and then do some gluing of other things and then it'll be ready for us later to paint in whenever we get to this later. And you want to paint. I need to see how big is this, and I'm going to go ahead and put a hole in the center and then a hole on each side, and this going to be super easy to attach. It's minimal sewing compared to what we've done before. Here's the center, about 4.5. I think I'm going to put this at Maybe they're about an inch from each end. How about that? Then I'm actually going to do the same thing that I did on the big book and flip this inside out. Try to keep everything together. But I'm going to flip it inside out so that I can take my all and right in that hole at an angle, I'm trying to get you do it in angle because you're trying to get all the way through and come through the center there. It's easier going in at a slight angle, and then put this one here. Excellent. Then feel like we're moving a little bit here. Try not to move it around like I just did, but I feel like everything was moving and I just couldn't help it. Let me get these line back up again. There we go. We're lined up. I want to take a clip here for a second and see if I can keep those from moving anywhere. While, I come over here and I'm also going to put those same holes in my cover because we're going to sew that thing to the cover. I've got my ruler out and I'm going to mark it right where I marked the other one. And we should be good to go. I probably could have put that on there and did it at the same time, but that's okay. There's the one I like for inside. Then I'm just going to poke these right through where I just marked. Here we go. You can use any thread really to bind this together. If you've got some pretty colored DMC thread, that would be great. I've got some brown wax thread, but I think for this, I'm just going to use on my desk. Here's a pretty brown. Might be easier just to use a little piece of ribbon even. Let's do a little piece of ribbon actually. Let me go grab some ribbon and I'll be right back. 10. Art Folio Book - Assembling Book: Changed my mind. I was actually thinking like a piece of twine like this, but I cannot find my spool of twine that I had. It's a good idea. I did find some ribbon, but then I thought that book is not going to lay flat if I actually used this ribbon, and I wanted to be a little flat or like a book. I'm going to go back for the moment to my original idea using my waxed thread because I have it here on the table. Then for some other art books, I might get ahold of. I even like this cotton string that's on that envelope. For some other art journals, I might get ahold of some stuff like that and just have it here in my art room. E years ago, I did plenty of sewing, but I don't really do the sewing so much now. I'm just going to cut some About the length of my arm. We're going to not use all of it. We don't have to double it because it's not a huge book. But I do want to at least string it onto a needle without it pulling all of it down. I'm going to use this as a single ply basically instead of doubling it. But I need to get it on the needle to start with. You don't need to even kn this. I'm going to start in the center and hopefully all my little line you're still lined up, we'll just have to may have to go into each layer and find where the hole might have moved because I feel like I was moving it as I was going, if you have to, just open it and go through each layer, and then the next two holes will be easier because they're line back up. There we go. Got the m all in there. Now I've got everything right there in the center hole, and I'm looking for the center hole of our book, and I'm going to come right out of that center hole. I'm just going to hold this much. I'm just going to hold it out here. You can see we've got extra twine on here and now I'm going to come in to the top hole and I may have to do the same thing and just find each hole in each layer. If you have to do that, it is what it is. Don't worry about it, do it. Find that hole and then here's the water color. Then the things that are shorter are obviously not going to be in our, here we go top and bottom hole, but that's okay. Then I'm just going to pull it firm, but I don't want to pull this any further out, but I do want to pull it down and I want to go back into this hole and come out the back side again. Now we are going to be looking to come in the bottom hole. Still going to have to search out the holes. If you've got different thicknesses of paper and stuff. I'm doing my best not to catch that thread. I don't want to catch that thread and hook that thread. There we go. I just want to come clear of that thread. There we go. I actually want to be on the other side of that. It's going to be a loose for a second, but that's okay. I'm just going to pull it inside very gently from the outside, I'm just pulling it very gently. Then I can pull this thread that's hanging out to get that nice and e. Now we're ready to come through this bottom hole. All right. I'm just going to open these up again and find the holes. Oh. There we go. Okay. And then I'm just going to pull that nice and even on the back side. Look at this. Now, we're just going to loop our thread under the existing piece that's here. And we can tie this off. But I want to make sure I've got everything and I want it super tight, but I don't want any weird loose thread. I'm just going to make sure I've got it all where I like it. I can get rid of the needle. Now that I've looped it underneath that one, it's got a nice center here, and we're just going to tie that off and knot it and you can double knot it if you want. Here we go. You can leave these long. You might cut them the same size or you and you can put charms on them and they can hang out the bottom. You can cut them shorter, which is what I'm going to do and it's just going to be in the middle. Now I am ready to add any extra decorative bits that I was thinking of. I was thinking of this back here. I do want to trim that. I know my blade is du. Let me go get a new blade. I'll be right All right I think I've got the right one, it matches, the top matches. These just pull off of here because this spreads a little bit, just pull that off and get rid of the old one. The new one will have a little plastic protector on it and just slips right back on. That's how easy these little fiscer cutters are to change the blades. Now, I need to trim this, I need to decide. I think I'm going to cut I could cut it off the top. But that pushes that one down almost too far, I want there to be a g. I think I'm going to cut a little off of each. This right here is nine and almost nine and a quarter. I want to cut this one I think I want at least that much showing, Let's just cut that little bit off. I'm going to cut a little bit off the top. There we go. It's even there. That's what I wanted and it's the right width, I'm not going to worry about that. Then I'm just going to take a glue stick and glue that in. This is just a U stick from **** Blue. And I just want to get it attached in here, so I'm not wanting to get out the big glues or nothing. I just want to get that set the glue stick. Sometimes glue stick is easy, easier. Then Here we go. I think that's where I want it. Now I've got the back on here. I also want to put myself an envelope in here where I can slip stuff in. Look at that. Oh my gosh. Best to ever. So we're going to give that time to do its thing. I really want an envelope in here, so I can either put an envelope on the front. That would be fun. Let's do that. I'm feeling that. Then I could slip stuff in it maybe. I could put little treasures in it, or I could do it in the center, but I want to there. I'm just going to glue stick this into the center into the front page. Sorry. I hope that's not going to get in the way of my idea for my clasp, but I don't think it will. I'm just going to get that as far down as I can. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I'm almost thinking that it could almost put a piece of art with the color thing in there. That's a fun option. If I just trimmed a little off of that, h. I'm going to sacrifice it. This P always say, what do you do with the art? What do you do with the art? I'm like, I save it. I might need it for something else. Here we go. I'm using some of all the things that I have just stored. This might be the wrong cutter for this. It's not going all the way to the top. This might not be the right blade. But it is. Close enough for me to at least trim some off of here, so I'll have to look and see what I've done, but I'm going to put it in the middle. All right. There we go. This might go to my other fiscers cutter. You can buy the cutter and then several blades when you buy the cutter and then you know you'll have the right blade, but I have a couple of these fiscer cutters, and so that might be the one that goes to the other one I have. I'm actually just going to slip these in to this little envelope. I love it. That's a beautiful piece of art. Look at that. I might just like it like that, but then I like that this has the color palette. I want to just see the art. Maybe I'll save the color palette that goes with these for another something. Then we can just close that up lovely. The idea that I had, let me just let that dry a moment while we're talking. The idea that I had for the cover is to put a grommet right here in the middle and then ribbon. Then I can wrap ribbon around this. I did pull out a piece of velvet ribbon. I got a whole bunch of ribbons fabric store and I just have strung up and hanging on my bookcase over here for projects like this. Look at this. This is a little velvety ribbon. These came from the hobby lobby. But now thinking can be our little wrap for coming up through the grommet. It'll make us a little rap. I'll stop right here like that'll knot it and we can wrap it around. Thinking like a little longer. Or I can it like that in the grommet, and then it can wrap around and then come out like that. I'm thinking that. All right. Let's put a gramme in it and then we can decide with the ribbon. I have a gramic kit, I actually ordered another little gramic kit but hasn't come in, but this is a gram kit that I've had forever. Got it at the hardware store, general grommet tool kit, and this has the grams. This is probably half inch. That's probably three eighths of an inch. I'm thinking this size for this size book. Then this has a block of wood in it that goes under here because it's like what you're going to need a hammer the gram and the grommet tool. This is the grommet tool. We need to make a hole first. I've got that envelope to about right there. I need to be under the envelope. And I want to be about right here. This little tool has something sharp at the end here, so we can get it where we want it and we can take our her and hammer that hole in because this is the whole cutter. There we go. Now I got my grommet hole. That's your gramt cutter. This is what the gram sits in. We're going to put that underneath and feed that right through the top there. Unless you want this to be the top, that might be the top. What we need to do is flip it open. There we go. I've still got this sitting on the piece of wood just protects the surface. There's that. Then this piece is our gram thing that we hammer onto. I'm going to attach the little grommet wheel for this. That's the wrong size, that's the bigger one. I'm going to attach the smaller one. Then we're not hammering on our finger gives us extra extra room there. I've got everything lined up. If you're looking through the side, you've got the wood, you've got the metal grommet holder that's holding the top of that, then you've got the grommet coming through the hole and then the grommet tool. There we go. One side is the correct side and the other side is the bigger side, on the correct side. Every gut kit will be a tiny bit different. Actually, the one I ordered has a hand squeezy thing, but I don't know if my hands are strong enough for that, but I thought maybe it might be nice to play and try it out. Once you get that in the place that you want it, I think I might have used the wrong tool. I might have should have used that smaller cutting tool now that I'm looking at the size of that hole. Let's see. We might just have to use the big grumt. I should have got the smaller cutty. Yeah. I use the bigger cutting hole. We're going to use the bigger gram, is a big grumt, that's okay. I have a big grumt. That's okay and it's higher than my envelope, but that's still going to shut it for us. It's got to be the right size hole for the right size grommet. Now I need to get that right size. It's been so long since I've looked at the gram kit. I should have played. There we go. Now we're ready. Now once you've got it all lined up and everything's ready. You're going to hammer the tar out of it. That's really loud. I know, but it makes the perfect gromt hole when you're done. It's nice and tight, it's firm, it's in the right place. That's how easy it is to do a grommet. Really you just got to get all your right pieces out and lined up. That's the part that might be the most confusing is pick all the little ones for the little one and all the big ones for the big one. But that's okay. In the end, that's what I wanted. Everything's taped in. My glue bits should now be secure. I could continue gluing other things in here. I might put some other envelopes. I might come back and paint the white pages. But for the moment, we've got everything in here and attached looking super cool, and I paint something big here in this piece here. We have all the interesting bits that we've gathered to look through. Oh my gosh, I just love this. Got our fun little extra piece flap here. Then you get to the end and you've got this beautiful back. Super pleased with that. Now I just need to decide because what I'm going to do is I'm going to go up here like this and then pull the ribbon through that to lock it in. I just need to decide, do I want that double or do I want that single? I think I want to like that. I'm just going to cut it. Let's just do it correctly now. Okay. Now, I'm going to have a little leg hanging out here. I'm going to pull this big long leg through that loop I just made. Now we've got ourself a nice, pretty little attachment there that holds it, I can now loop this around. If I want, I could use this to tie it off because I left a little leg out here. Thinking I like two loops, and then I might want to trim this to the same length with the two loops. How about that? Then this can be a little tie off on the front because we've left ourself a little extra ribbon and we could tie it off. Look how pretty that is. Oh, my gosh. We're going to call this a bits and pieces and scraps folio with a little ribbon tie. I've used a fun vintage folio for photographs as my cover, which I love. Then we've got some secret pockets inside. We've got some pages that we can paint. We've got some yummy pages in between that that are decorative and pretty that we could add to or leave them as they are. Super fun and easy way to make a journal and gather all the fun pieces and scraps that you've already created. If you don't want to paint in it later, you can get all painted pieces and old papers and fabrics and make it all complete when you sew it together. I want to work on it some more, so I do like that I have given myself some space and a few more things that I could be doing in it. Then we can tie that off with our pretty ribbon. Hope you enjoy making the little artfolio, and I'll see you back in class. 11. Vintage Book Cover Art Journal - Supplies: Okay. For this vintage book cover journal. Just going to tell you here what supplies. I'm going to go over these more in depth as we're creating it. But you'll need an old book, and so I'd probably hit the T thrift stores and look for books that have just a pretty cover that maybe you could work with, it could be plain, it could be a book you already have. I like the thrift store because usually just a couple dollars. I go to the antique store and you can get tons of books for a couple dollars. I do look for some that maybe aren't in the best condition. I don't want a first edition obviously. I want something that I don't mind. Trashing and re imagining into something else. An old book. You'll also need some type of glue. I'm using the acid free tacky glue, the PVA glue is also the other glue that I use with books. I want the acid free. If you get the tacky glue, acid free, that way it doesn't yellow, and it stays good for the life of whatever you've used it on. The PVA book binding glue is already acid free and perfect. I also like using a glue stick. I look for acid free glue sticks. I got some of these at the **** Blick the other day and they don't say one way or another. They may not be acid free. But I do like having acid free glue sticks or a glue stick personally because it's easier glue and papers sometimes with a glue stick. I may or may not be using this one. We'll see. Then you'll need your book binding kit. Obviously, you'll need some waxed thread or whatever thread that you're choosing to sew your signatures with, you'll need your all. You'll need your bone folder, and you'll need your book binding needles, which are gigantic embroidery needles basically. I just have my little $7 kit from Amazon that's become my new favorite little kit. It's fantastic. There's extra stuff in the bag, but those four items that I just showed you came in that kit. Then another thing you'll need is whatever paper that you're going to be using for your signatures. I've chosen a watercolor paper in this journal. I think I might have used the Kanson one, but Ha Muy is another one that I like. Whatever your favorite surface is that you want to create with. You could also make these mixed media papers, like we did in the other books with some vintage papers and some watercolor papers to paint on and you could have some handmade papers in there. You could really just doll up in any way that you feel like working today. Then I like having a velvet ribbon. I did find some velvet ribbon at the hobby lobby. This is a great width. Let me tell you what this is. This is about an inch and a half. Is the size of that. So about an inch and a half. Width, not the super thin because this way, you have a nice ribbon to wrap around and secure, and then you could put a really pretty decorative bobble there if you wanted to. I was thinking like one of my grandmother's old pins with the costume jewelry pins that they used to wear on their lapels that were so pretty would be a pretty addition. I've also used on here a piece of antique lace just as some extra decoration. I loved that. I also became a little pocket ssh for maybe some pieces of art here that you could put on the outside of your journal. I might even go back and glue the bottom of the lace to make it a true pocket so that these don't slip out the bottom, but for now it's just tucked in. That is the basics of how I'm creating my art journal from a book and then these will be pages that I can paint on and draw on and I can collage on because I've got the ribbon here, I can just tuck it closed after I use it. And I love this little journal. I also want to say, you might need a little bit of some book repair tape if you have a particularly delicate spine when you separate the book out of the spine. Book repair tape is fantastic. You could probably also use like a masking tape would be okay, maybe, but this stuff super sticky and cloth feeling, so to be flexible. I do have some book repair tape, which I'm going to show you in a separate video how you might repair a binding before you sew it all together because in the actual project, I didn't do that, but I did mention that. I want to show you how you can do that. All right. I'll see you in class. 12. Vintage Book Cover Art Journal - Reinforcing Spine: Okay. So in this video, I want to show you real quick how we can repair a binding if the binding is just too delicate. And so this is a super delicate. The paper is brittle. It's breaking away. To cut the binding, I just cut the very first page away from the spine, and then I have the book left over. And I showed you in the video where we're making our actual book. I showed you a whole bunch of inspiration books that I've had for photography props that I did not make, but I purchased because I loved them from an antique dealer that like to decorate the books and they made beautiful props. Well, the piece that you take out of here, you can make into some of those delicious examples that I was showing you. Don't throw this away. This is good stuff. Then We just want to clean out that spine, just get rid of all that dust right there, and then we will be ready to repair the inside. This is super thin. It's very delicate. I do have a feeling if I were poking needles and sewing into that that I could run into a problem. This is where the book binding tape comes in handy. You're not going to see the inside here because when I created our journal in class, I like to take the very first page of my signature and use that as my inside book cover here. You never see what's underneath there or the spine. But if you don't want to see it hanging out the edge here, then you might come to about within a quarter of an inch of the book, bottom and top, and basically what I'm going to do. Is cut myself, a piece of tape about the right length. I saw the book binders tape in white or black, the repair tape, but I'm sure comes in other colors because you see it on the outside of books. A lot of times that's how it's bound on the outside. You might look around to see if there's any colors that you particularly like. I'm going to fold this in half sticky sides like that and get it positioned where I want it, and then very carefully work my way to the outside of the book there. So that I'm making it where it's still flexible. Now I've got an extra layer in there that's going to protect the book. It's going to give me something to sew into without it being just the spine itself, and it's super sticky. Once we sew our signatures in there and then we glue down our face page here, you're not even going to see that and it's going to give you the extra strength that you're going to need on a particularly delicate book. I probably should have done that on my book. But I didn't, but that's how you do it. Now, you want to do that before you punch the holes and before you start sewing. Once you pull the center out, go ahead and secure that. If it's a book you love and you're just trying to repair. That's how you could repair that and then just glue a face page back in there, and then your book is repaired. You could actually repair an old book in that way. I just thought I would show you book repair and book repair tape. I'm actually maybe going to look and see if that comes in other colors for myself. It could be book repair tape, book spine tape, some type of book tape just to see because the whites fine, and it's covered up completely like you can't even see that I've done that, and it came in black, white might be a better choice. But that's how we're going to repair a spine if you need to. If you buy a really delicate book or you just want the extra strength in there. I'll see you guys back in class. 13. Vintage Book Cover Art Journal: This next art journal that we're going to make, I want to show you where my inspiration is coming from, and then the take that I'm going to do on this because I actually want mine to be a journal with papers in it that I can paint. I think that's what I've decided. But I wanted to show you some of these that I did not make that I collected over the years, and I used them as photography props. These are some of my favorite possessions. I wanted to take a play off of something like this to maybe decorate the outside or the cover perhaps or just have some pretty ribbon or things that tie around it or just give you some ideas really since I have them, whether I actually do any of these on my own book or not, I wanted to give you these ideas. These are old books that are still old books and they're just made for decorative purposes, I guess, but I used the most photography props. But I really liked this one, it has a couple pieces that are sewn together. And then just sat on the top with some string holding it together and look how pretty that is. That's one good idea. Another good idea is collecting like old locks and things like that. I have a bunch of old scutchons and things that went to doors and keyholes and stuff like that. I have some metal pieces, and I think I even have a few locks like this that I collected as photography props. I'll have to look through my sash and see. But this is just a collection of a piece of tissue paper, an old piece of a book cover, piece of music. There's a piece of fabric under here, and then just a little page from a book that was maybe interesting or had some meaning, all tied together with some twine. Lovely. Love that. This one is super cool because it has a lovely wood piece that is tied on to the edge. Then an old piece of lace piece like canvas, like a stiff canvas piece, I guess that's painted. There's a painted piece of a canvas or a painting. And then a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson saved in there and it's all tied together by twine, so it can be taken apart with the pretty wood at the side on the spine. That was super fun. Again, it's still the whole book. It's not a journal, but these are just so inspiring to me. This has an old keyhole piece of paper that has been cut into the shape of a feather and some old canvases just on the front of just an interesting looking old book tied together with some string. This one I love, it's got some old jute and lace with a string and it's got a couple of feathers and this beautiful decorative piece that might have been an old earring and footprints in the dust. An interesting word tucked in there and it's just a little stack of books that don't have the covers anymore, but I really love that one. It's so beautiful. Then this one I love. This one is actually a little more along the lines of, I would say junk journal because it's got papers and things stuffed into the side that you could then use for junk journaling. It's almost like they intended you to take this apart and use the book pages or just as a decoration, you could have the book pages. Se now this was coming apart. How interesting is that? Let's just take a look at it. We've got an old book cover. Love that. Piece of ribbon holding it together. Then inside, just lots of papers stuffed in there. Old papers you write on, there's some music. Some of this, I could pull out and use and other things. Just scraps of papers tucked in. Then this is a piece of burlap that has looks like spacing on it or plaster. Then a lovely pin that holds an old stamp and maybe some interesting words and then it was just on here like that. That is super cool and really easy and you didn't have to deconstruct a book to do it. I have a couple of old books here that I'm actually going to deconstruct. I have a whole pile of books because I use them in my photography and I collected them for a while. I'm going to sacrifice one of these that doesn't even bother me a bit. Some people are like, No, don't sacrifice books, save the books and stuff like that. But I don't mind sacrificing the books. I love the title of this one love and Liberty. A thrilling narrative of the French Revolution of 17 92. Well, that one's actually in English, and I could read it. Some of my books are in other languages. But I really like the ones that have the decorative cover covers. I have not paid very much for any of these books at all. I use them in photography props for many years now. I love this cover, and I'm looking for covers that are fairly well. Not falling apart. They're still in fairly good condition, and I could basically cut the page out here and pull the glued book part out and use the cover as the journal. This is Lucy's half crown. This one is Poke. I swear that's what it says, POP, E N D, Y KE. Maybe maybe that's the author. Mr. And misses Spoop and ****. I guess there is an e on that. How funny. I don't know what this book would be. The 15 puzzle preparing to enjoy themselves, Anabel Lee. Mr. Spoopen Dike of Clinton Streak is one of the most cheery, cheerful gentlemen in Brooklyn, and his wife is the soul of good humor. Maybe this is a fiction book to read. Maybe I'll keep that one and read it. I'm feeling like I'm going to sacrifice this one because it's already fallen apart, so I don't feel like super bad for continuing to take it apart. It's in fairly good condition on the outside. I think it's even coming apart without me trying. Let's go ahead and deconstruct this. And you can get old books at the Thrift store. They're fairly easy to find and get something that's not interesting that you're not afraid to sacrifice and just go for it. I'm just cutting the end page here and that's just letting me separate that from the book section. That's all there is to that. That was pretty easy. I'm going to use this as my journal cover. Then just whatever that dust is. We're going to sew some signatures. I'm going to use a watercolor paper because I want to be able to paint in this. You could use art that you've already made. You could use old papers, like we did in the art folio. You could do a variety of papers and handmade stuff. I feel like I want to have watercolor paper. You could even do T stained papers if you wanted to t stain papers. I feel like I want to do watercolor paper with deced edges. I'm either going to pick a favorite watercolor paper that I like to use. I could go ahead and do that because I'd have to cut this down anyway. I could use my deced edge ruler to cut these down. And basically, I would cut that size. Or that size and I wouldn't even have to decal, I wouldn't have This right here could get me two of those. I think I could get me two of those. Let's see. Yeah, I could maybe not quite two. Maybe if I made them a little s, here we go. Yeah. This size paper is 140 pound cotton paper, ten. I smidge over 10 " by a smidge over 14 ". It's 26 centimeters by 36 centimeters. This is 12 sheets. I don't think you can get the Canson Heritage paper anymore, but I had a bunch of pads from when you could get it, and I just saved them. Just hoarding them in my closet. Now, I feel like this is going to be the moment to use these and Because they're all flat edged, I might just leave them flat edged because I wanted to use this in one of these books. This might be the time because now I could cut these in half and make pages out of these. I'm thinking that we might need to have 33 in here. Let's go ahead and I'm going to cut these pages in half and judge if I've got enough, out of this one pad. I'm thinking the one pad. If I do six sheets in a signature, if I say register, I have register on the brain. Just know every time I say register, I mean signature. If I have six pages per signature, and I've cut this in half, that could be That could be nine pages that I'd use out of here. So I wouldn't even be using a full pad of paper and I think that would definitely be thick enough. Let me pull these out and I'm going to cut these in half and I'll be right back. I have cut nine sheets in half. To give me three signatures with six pieces of paper in it. Now I'm going to fold these in half and I'm not going to fold them in half sheet by sheet. I'm going to fold it in half the entire register signature. See, I caught myself, but the entire signature, and I'm just going to take my bone folder and I'm standing up so that I can lean hard on that and make my signature. Now if you did it one by one, you see how this steps out, it's going to step out no matter what. But if you do it one by one, they step out way further and they don't fit inside each other very well. Okay. Here's number two, six pages, and I may take a page out, but I'm thinking six. This is thick paper. This is like the crim de la crim of paper. On the bigger books, I was using that cotton cody paper because it's affordable, it's good for mixed media. It's going to do everything that I generally might want to do in an art journal. But for this littler book, thinking I want it to be a paper that I love love. Lo I like the cody paper, but I don't love love it. Let's see if two. Let's see how full this makes us right here. Now I can see that two might be plenty and three might be too much. I'm going to fold the third 1.5 just to see, but we may be doing the two. If we just do the two, then I can make a little mini one. Like I did that art folio, this one here that we made. I can just get a cover and sew that in there with maybe some handmade paper and make a mini folio. I'm not afraid of just going ahead and seeing what we're going to be using there. Let's see. Can we fit a third or is this too many? Let's just see. Well, I can fit a third, it's definitely going to have paper hanging out at the end. Then I have to decide, does that bother me? I don't think it bothers me. But you could always trim those up so that they're completely even and have them inside the book. That's a choice, but I think with an art journal because we can tie this off with ribbon and do some fun stuff, like them hanging out. I just need to decide, was the two enough? Or maybe if I took a sheet out, maybe it's five sheets instead of six, and I can use this extra sheet of paper in some other project. Was that a better fit? Just look and judge until you're like, I think that would be it. I do think that's it right there. I've got just enough covering in there. I think I'm going to do that right there. Now what we got to do is we have to punch all our holes, and I'm going to attach these in the same way that I did the art folio, where we are going to tie these off in the center of that. It's going to be super easy to sew these and we're going to have some lovely yarn or thread showing on our spine. Let's just measure these out and make them and get our holes punched here. I've just got a ruler, and I'm going to these are 7 " in length because remember that was 14 " was the paper, it's about seven. I'm actually going to it's seven in a line if you're doing inches, but we're just going to say seven. About 3.5 would be in the center, then I think I want to come on down here within an inch of the end. Then I am just going to hold this ruler up. I've got a baby ruler. Where did I put it? I'll just hold the big ruler up. I'm just going to set the ruler down on my table and draw me a line up the side here so that these are all marked in the same place. Then I'm going to mark this on the book also, exactly where I want these to sit so that I'm getting this in the same spot. So what we could do. Let's take our ruler and just draw a line in here. I don't think that last line was straight because I was leaning to the side. Let's try that again. Now I got a line. I know I'm going to have to have three holes signatures. Thinking like, if this is, This is 1.5 ". I'm thinking three eighths of an inch from each side and then in the center. That's where I'm going with that. I wonder where. I'm just going to draw myself a line. If it's exact, it's okay. If it's not exact, it's okay. I just want to give myself visually where I'm going to put those. I wouldn't bide. Then we're going to take our all, and we're going to poke a hole right in this cover. This covers delicate. I'm just going to be careful. But it's no more delicate. I'm thinking than handmade paper. It's just old. I've got a whole punch in every spot that I've marked, and then on my signatures, I'm going to bend them backwards. And then at the center part here, go in at an angle, just like I've done in the other books that we've created, so I come out on the spine. It does get easier with practice, punching these holes and getting them in the right place. If you don't get it exactly in the right place, don't fret, but see all three of those came out in the correct place. Then I'm going to fold that back and do that to the other two, and then we're going to sew that into there. Now, I want to make sure I've got them in order because I get these out of order, and then the lines don't add up. You want to make it in the exact same order that you did it. If you're like me and you can't keep track, go ahead and put a number even before you punch those holes, maybe. And then just take a look at where we are lined up in our book. Excellent. I'm going to use the waxed thread that came with my Amazon book kit. I'm going to get a needle out. These are the book needles. They're just gigantic embroidery needles, I think. You don't have to double this if you don't want to, so I'm going to do a single thread because it's a n heavy duty thread. We've got plenty of plenty of strength with that. I'm going to give myself enough length. We're going to sew each of these in separately. I'm not going to attach them like we did in our big book that we made, not going to punch a hole. Sorry, not going to tie a knot. Thinking as I'm going, here we go. What I'm going to do is go right through the center hole of our first signature, and I'm going to pull it till I've got just a tail hanging out here and I'm going to go through our hole in our book of where this is going to go. This one, we are actually sewing it to the spine of the book. You want to find a book that you think can hold up to a little bit of wear and tear. I don't plan on abusing it, but you want to have a tiny bit of strength. If it doesn't have enough strength, you might wash your tape and really strengthen this up, which I could do. I think I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to be on the outside of the book. I came out the center hole. I'm going to go up to one hole that's up here at the top, and I'm going to go ahead and come through that hole. Pull it taut. Don't do it too hard because again, these books are delicate. Then I'm going to go right through the top hole of our book. Signature. There we go. Now I've got that one. I'm going to come back through the center hole. I'm holding the thread out of my way a little bit because I don't want to grab the thread accidentally. I'm going to go through that hole again. There we go. Then I'm going to go through that hole again on the book spine. Coming out the outside. I'm not too worried right now about everything being tight because I can tighten it in a second. Now I'm going to come back through the hole right down here at the bottom that I've prepped, and then I'm going to come through the bottom hole in our signature. Here we go. And I'm going to hold that. Then I'm going to make sure everything now is tightened up. On the outside. I to make sure I've got all these where it's just making a straight line out here, just like that. Then I'm going to take this thread here and come right through our loop up top and that's going to give me a little bit of strength and then I'm just going to tie this off a double knot right there. I'm just going to double that, and then I will clip our threads. You can leave these long or you can leave them short, your preference. Some people leave them long and then tie lovely little charms on it that hang out of the book. But there's our first signature attached to the book spine. Now we're going to attach book number two in the exact same way coming through the second hole there on our cover. And then we're going to attach number three the same way, going through the third set of holes on our cover. See where we're going here, right through the middle and leave myself a tail, and then through this middle hole on the spine. Again, being just trying to be careful with the spine. You could reinforce the spine before you do all this. Now I'm going to the top hole and top hole of the book. There we go. Another thing that I can do when we're done, I can actually glue down this first page of the signature here to give that extra strength attached to the back there. That would give it some extra strength, also, which I might do because I actually like that first page glued down, but you don't have to. That's just an option if you've got a more delicate book that you're working with and maybe you didn't reinforce it. I did not reinforce this one. Thought it would be okay, but it is a little bit delicate and that will take away. I'm going right back down through the center of the paper and back down through the center of the book to get to the outside of the book so that I got that other line back there. Excellent. Now through the top hole at the book and the top hole of our signature. Then we're going to tie it off just like we did the other one. All right. Let me get that tight. Got some loops in here. Let's just pull that tight here. Here we go. I don't want to pull it so tight that I'm going to tear something up, but tight enough that it's just making a nice line there on the outside. Again, I've got this pull my needle off, but I don't need it. I've got this loop up here and I'm just going to run this thread under that loop. Make sure it's all pull taut and we don't have anything weird on the outside. This is the second one. Yeah. Then we're just going to tie a knot, a double knot. And then trim legs here. Now we got two signatures in and be careful and you got your third signature. Get a piece of thread. Then the third one in. We got number three. Are we still the same direction? Yes, we are. Now I'm going in to the middle one, and I'm going into the last hole in the middle on the book cover. I'm leaving myself a little tail inside. And we're going to one of the holes on the top or the bottom, whichever way you're going. And then through the bottom hole on our signature. And then we're coming up here and going back through the middle hole and on our spine. There we go. So now we've got that. And then we're going through the top hole and back through our signature, and then we're ready to tie the third one off. I could have two many in here, but I've done the best I could. We'll just have to see what we end up with. All right. Through the loop that we go over there and then tie this off. T. Oh, now, I've got three that are in here. There we go. Okay. The third one. There we go. Little loose on the outside. I might move on the outside a little bit. I'm going to make sure these are nice and squished down maybe with my bone folder right here. Then I could put these overnight, set in some heavy books on top of it, that flattens it out really nicely too. But to really strengthen this, I'm going to glue this back page to that page so that I don't have to worry about it coming off of our spine there. I feel like I could have made this one tighter. I'm going to pull the knot out of this one because I do see that it's tight. It's real loose on the outside. If you use the wax thread, you can pull the knot out. It's a really sturdy knot, but you could take a needle and pull it out if you see that you're just having too much pop out on the backside. There we go. I like that. Then I'm going to glue those pages in, and then I want to use tacky glue to make sure that it really attaches good. Then we can decorate the cover. I'm thinking that I want to ribbon enclosure, maybe. Like a big Of course, I could the front, this is the front. On the back part. If you decide you want a ribbon closure attached to the back that you can just wrap around like we did. You want to do that before you glue this page down on the back. This is the front and it has a direction because I can see the pretty cover. Do we want a big piece of ribbon that we can attach and then wrap around or do we want a big piece of ribbon that we can just tie around it and tie a bow? That's some interesting stuff. Let me go get some ribbon and I'll be back. I have a whole ribbon spool of ribbon of different ribbons. I got at the hobby lobby. I feel like I want to use this pretty gold if I string all these from this piece of ribbon, I have them strung on because I have them strung on this and hung on a door knob. If I string them, they're hard to get strung back on this piece of ribbon. I just brought the whole thing over here. I'm feeling like because this book is such a lovely color that I think this color would compliment that. Now I'm thinking, do I want this coming out the back? So that it can wrap around like this and seal off like we did on our big book, or do we want to do something like This, just giving you some ideas here on how you might do yours. We could do something like this where we tie it off each time we've worked in it and tie a big bow, and then that will hold it closed for us. Just some ideas and you can work your bow a little better than I just work that bow, but that's just to give you some ideas on how you might close it up. Another consideration is we could maybe glue some lace or vintage something over the top of that, and then this could wrap around on top of that. I feel like I want to do the wrap around I might attach something pretty and antique on here. I'll have to look in my dash. Let's do this first. I'm going to leave enough in there. I'm going to glue that to the back cover and then come around a couple of times so that I can tuck that right there. Let's just give ourselves enough space to do that. Then we can put all these little ribbons back on the door knob, they hang on. It's a really convenient way to do that. If you've got a bunch of ribbon spools and you're like, how can to store those? Let me go grab some old pieces of lace. I'll be right back. I found a piece of antique lace that I used for photography stuff. Feel like I want to do this on the cover, and then I will have this wrapping around as an additional decoration, or you could have it go like this. I could have looped it around before that dried and that could have been inside. Now I'm feeling like, maybe it needs to be inside. Is it stuck stuck? I think it's stuck stuck. It is stuck stuck. Maybe I will just loop it down and let it end or I could cut it straighter. I should have thought of this before I actually shut, glut before I glued that page down. I might even just pull it off anyway because it's not completely dry, but this tacky glue is tacky. Let's do this, where we want it? Let's get it inside there. Yeah. Then I will put some more glue on that watercolor paper. But then I'll at least have it in there and I can glue this back down. Got so many ideas. This tacky glue dries clear, but if I get anywhere I don't want it, I've got some baby wipes here and I can just smooth that off with a baby wipe. I do like that better that's going under the cover. Now I'm actually going to loop this around and let it go up the backside. Now, I'm going to put glue on the backside. I'm going to loop the lace while before I stick it down and then I'm going to stick that down, but I also want to remember to stick this down too. Don't forget this. We've got two things to stick on here before we stick it to the watercolor paper. I put a little glue at that binding right there too. I'm going to stick the lace. Actually, I'm going to make sure that the book will close. I don't want to stick the lace down. And then the book not close. Don't stick it too far before the book. I'm going to make sure I get this in there. Let me get this stuck a bit too. And I'm going to get my bone folder just really smooth that down some. Then I'm going to smooth that front page down some also. I think I've got whole book page stuck to my bone folder here. I'm okay with the paper sticking out a tiny bit. If you're not okay with the paper sticking out a tiny bit, then just know it's going to do that. I feel like I want to attach Maybe right here on the back. I want to attach this ribbon so that I can make sure it's always go in the right direction. Yes, I think I'm going to do that. I'm going to put some glue right here on the spine. To get that to hold the lace and that was way too much. I think that was way too much, but we're going to stick it and see. Okay. I think we're okay. Look at that. That's going to force it to go the right way where I see the velvet part of this stuff. Then because I haven't glued this top part down, we could you guys. Let me just pull that a little bit so that it stays and doesn't do something weird. But we could take some little piece of art or paper or something that we can tuck in there as an additional little decoration if we wanted to. I put all the little papers away that I had, but just as an example, we had this little book cover, we had a poem and find some little piece of art or something that maybe we love. I like, look at this. This is just a a random watercolor thing. Let me just tear that a little better. Worst tear job ever was heck. So pretty something that we could then slip in underneath that lace and it would hold those pieces really cool for us. I also like that random pin that was on that book. I might cannibalize that pretty book and use that pin. Then we can just tuck this underneath here to hold that if we want, or you could get a a pretty decorative pin. I've got some pins that were my grandmother's that have a pretty decoration like that old ear ring on that one book I showed you. Some pretty pin attached there would be pretty. I might go through some of the old pins that we as my grandmother's and see if there's something pretty I can attach there. Anyway, What do you think about an old book as your art journal, picking the right paper that you want to use in it and paint in it. Now I'll just know when I'm using it, be a little careful because this is an old book and I can paint in all of these pages and have a beautiful book to look at. You see the spine here. We just have to be careful as we're looking and using that book. How fun is that? Hope you guys enjoy this project? I can't wait to see some of the yummy stuff that all create in this class. I'll see you back in class. 14. Recap & Paper Prep For Painting: This video, I just want to do a quick recap of the books that we created in class, we did the great big art journal with some very interesting different pages. We did the art folio and we made a journal out of an old book cover. Just talk about what you might consider doing to paint or prep your pages depending on what types of papers that you've put into your book. If you're doing the big book, and you use some type of watercolor paper. That's ready to paint on just like you normally would. But if you're using handmade papers or decorative ones, then those aren't necessarily ready to be painted on and I would prep those pages with Gesso. I would use clear Gesso because then it will just give you a surface to paint on without covering up the surface that we have in the book. If you're using handmade papers like I am, you might consider leaving that page like it is. You could collage on top of it and glue pieces on top of that and let that shine through. You could flip to the backside and just so the backside and paint something on the back side while leaving the front side be what it is. You've got some choices there. If you're doing something with a very heavily textured piece like this, I would definitely have some wax paper, kitchen wax paper like deli paper. I would have some of those handy. If you're going to attach things on top of it like glue, some collage bits or if you're going to paint and stain that paper some different stuff. I'd protect the page underneath it and do what I was going to do and let it dry, and then you could pull out the wax paper. I have a big stack of wax paper that I always keep handy here in my art room for protecting other pages when I've got some unusual papers. Now that's so unusual that I might just never paint that or change it and I might paint this page and I might paint this page. Then I might even like cut this page to be a different size than it is and do maybe shorter, I could do a little cutout. You all kinds of things that you could be creative with on a piece of paper like that. I like having stuff like that in my book because it's challenging. You have to think, Okay, what would I do with that? Then I've got some solid colored handmade papers, I could use that for collage work or I could just sew it. Then I've got papers with some pattern on it. And maybe the patterns on the one side, and it's really beautiful and I might do a complimenting piece here on the other side. But the backside is plain, so I could either just so that and paint it, I could glue a piece of art or collage on top of that, and then I could be ready to paint on the watercolor paper beside it. You just have to be thoughtful about what the different pages are. Now if you're doing a book and you're afraid to mess up pages you might buy a big sketchbook and think, I'm afraid to even use this because I don't want to mess it up. Trust me. I'm right there with you. If it would make you feel better to paint all your pieces, get the papers that you want to use, paint them all and do what you're going to do. You could leave stuff like the handmade papers. You could leave that for work later once you've got it in the book. But if you're going to be afraid to even touch the watercolor pages, for instance, because you're like, it's a big blank page, I don't want to mess it up. Look how pretty my book is, I don't want to ruin this. Then paint them first. And work them in your book, already painted. This is a big painting that I did. Then I went ahead and just use that as one of my pages in my book. Look how gorgeous it is on either side of it. It's one big painting that's in cut in half and you see half of it here and half of it here. You see how easy and pretty that was, and more handmade paper that I could maybe leave this like it is, got a pattern on it, but maybe I could just so the back. That is how I would handle pages in your big book. Pages in your little artfolio, This has different pages in it than what I had in that book. Pages like here, if I have some watercolor paper, you could paint on that like normal, the tissue paper, which this is actually this wax paper stuff, which amazingly enough. This is a dry wax paper is specifically what this is called. I got a big box of it at the Sam's club one time, and I still have it. It's a big box. But amazingly enough, it's like a nice heavy weight tissue paper. It's easy to paint on, and if you soak up say, paint off of a stencil that you used. It's actually really pretty runoff paper. That was a piece that I could have just thrown away. It wasn't meant to be a piece of art, but look how gorgeous it is. Save anything that you do like that. I like that it's translucent, like a vellum. You could paint the other side of that, but I really think it's beautiful like it is. And then handmade paper. I would just so that. Again, this is another piece of tissue paper or this wax paper. Old papers. You can paint on old papers, but they're not really made for wet media. I would just so this with clear Gesso before you went to paint on it, and then it would be ready. That's all the different papers that I have put in that book. And then the last book that we made, I just put watercolor paper in. That would be just however you normally paint your watercolor paper. Just be thoughtful about what paper you use, and if it's made for a wet medium or not, paint or what have you. If it's not, then you can clear Gesso those pages before you paint and you'll be good to go. I'll see you back in class. 15. Final Thoughts: As we wrap up our scraps to Treasure's rt Journal bookmaking workshop. I hope you'll feel inspired and empowered to continue exploring the endless possibilities of creating your own art journals. Keep experimenting with different materials and techniques, and let your art journals be a space for personal expression and artistic growth. Thank you for sharing your creativity and stories with us, and I look forward to seeing how your journals evolve.