Books, I Made A Couple!

I made these journals for my daughters' birthdays and titled them with their favorite Jane Austen books, Persuasion for Dawn, Pride and Prejudice for Valerie. It was interesting to put these together having never made a book in my life. I learned a lot from the process and would like to take the time to make one that requires the stitching together of pages. We’ll see. I uploaded a ton of photos onto my Flickr that I took while making them if you’re interested. I still can’t believe the top two turned out like I imagined. Rarely does that happen when I’m crafting, it usually just sort of evolves into its own thing.

I used Tim Holtz grunge board for the covers, inked them up and sealed them with a coat of Mod Podge Hard Coat. I purposely swirled the Mod Podge Hard Coat around to give it more texture when it was dry.

I love the feel of that grunge board, it’s like super thick fabric-y feeling card board, it’s so flexible and bendy. It even took the creasing well.

The actual design on the front cover was made by stamping brown card stock then applying several coats of the Mod Podge Hard Coat (the regular is too sticky for my taste). When I was satisfied with the coverage I let it dry then scrunched it up to give it that worn, leather look. When that dried I attached it to the grunge board with some super strong red double sticky tape and gave the entire front another coat of Mod Podge Hard Coat.

The ribbon I used on the inside front and back covers (to cover up the back of the brads and eyelet) was too white, so I aged it with Vintage Photo Distress Ink by Tim Holtz

For the paper I used some packaging filler paper that came with something one of my daughters ordered. There seemed to be a whole ream of the stuff, and I loved how it felt, so I rolled it up thinking it would be neat to use for something vintage-y looking.

The embellishments on either side of the clasps are brads, the base plate is metal and the latch is leather attached with an eyelet on back.

 

I’m sure I broke all sorts of book-making rules, but I wasn’t going for perfection, I was just hoping to have something extra ordinary to give my girls.