The Old Becomes New !

For this month's additions to the Emporium in Fredericksburg, I finally got around to working on some old books that I have been stashing away for a long time. I have never met a Used Book Sale that I could pass by and often I get some wonderful finds as no one else wants the beleaugered volumes that I am looking for!! All of these books were collected because I liked the vintage covers and most were totally falling apart. I took the covers off and in some cases saved the innards and then went to work collaging the cover boards. Above you see the spines of the three journals that are now for sale at the Emporium at Liberty Town. I have decided to call them "Begun Again Books".

I will show you the books from left to right corresponding to the spine shot above. This Journal is created again with my hand dyed fabrics and a piece of embossed Fabric/Paper. I can see this Journal being used for gardening notes. Each journal has three to four signatures with each signature (group of pages) covered by a hand painted paper that I created using a gesso resist technique. Each signature is stitched into the book with waxed linen thread and embellished on the spine with glass seed beads.

I covered the interior of the book covers with vintage sheet music and here you can see an example of the signature wrap sheets. Each wrap sheet was done with differnt colors and patterns depending upon the style that the old covers told me that they wanted to adopt.

This is the middle journal from the top picture. I love this cover! These are not easy to find but I am sure that this was left behind because it was barely attached to the block of pages and the pages were so damp that they were shredding at the slightest touch. But I had a vision and I am thrilled with the results. Oddly enough, the title of this book was "The Life Of Napoleon" Not what I would have expected from the beautiful floral embossing!!
For this Journal I used some soft floral upholstery scraps for the spine, accented it with some crimson crushed velvet bias cut fabric and then framed a piece fo Fabric/Paper. I added a smidgen of vintage tucking and lace, topped off by a beautiful carved Mother Of Pearl button.

This Blue Journal was a wonderful old volume fromoa set of Encyclopedias. The spine was again pretty much detatched , but it had this wonderful gold embossed lettering and design on it. I saved the spine embellishment and had to include a small piece of it here as a collage element. (bottom right corner ) I used all of my own hand dyed fabrics to refurbish this journal and also added a piece of Fabric/Paper that included a stamping of my hand carved bird . This journal has a special surprise on the back.

This is a pocket from a pair of jeans. I always save the pockets from old jeans!!!! I collaged the pocket with my fabric/paper technique and added it to the back of the journal as a working pouch for journaling tools or ephemera, to be added to the journal at a later date. This is my "Begun Again Pocket Journal".

I have many more sets of covers in various stages of doneness and I am working on several to add to my new Etsy shop that I hope to be relaunching in May!!

If ever you come across wonderful old books with fabulous covers, don't pass them by. You can refurbish them and create something wonderfully unique that has a purpose. Or you can send the covers to me!! I always accept wonderful tattered donations!!!!!

Happy Spring Weekend to all!!!

Collage Papers

After my recent adventures with dying fabrics, I have been consumed with color!! I have been feeling the need to play and create colored papers and collage with the thought that I would create small journals to sell during the holiday season. You see, there is a method to my madness, I am thinking and working ahead to create some stock for the upcoming holidays while following my muse and having fun!! The planets don't align for me very often so when they do I MUST take full advantage!!
I wanted to ahve texture and lots of color but make things realtively simple. So I chose to start with gesso resist and acrylic paints. I cranked the above papers out in a couple of hours - these are the best ones, in my opinion but all will be used in some fashion.
Here are some tighter shots. (Left click on any picture to get a look at the details!)

This next piece is the large sheet of paper that I used to protect my work surface! I used sktech paper from a big pad for all of these. I just love the Serendipity of this sheet!!!

So I decided taht I would create another set of papers with simple bright color washes to complement the gesso resist papers and I would stitch the two sets of papers together n the sewing machine. This way I could avoid bubbling papers and not get everything all wet with glues. Plus the stitching would add more fabulous texture to each set of pages.

Next I had to think about covers for my little journals. I took some heavy watercolor paper and did some paint scraping and sponge work to come up with these two cover sheets.

All that I did was scrape paint over the surface using an old gift card. ( A favorite tool!)
For this next sheet it was all about color and a small sponge!

I found a sheet of collaged text that I had created awhile back and took the gift card and paint to it as well. There is a glare on this shot as the last layer that I added was a metallic blue. If you click on any of the pictures you can see all of the details, especially on this one. I will be able to get several covers from this one sheet.

Once I had painted up a storm, I took the frilled edges off of the full sheets of paper and saved them , of course!! Then I tore all of the sheets down to size and stitched a bunch of them together to create packs of pages with three sheets to each signature. (More on this aspect in a later post.)
After a round of stitching, I started to gather everything up and unearthed the bag of frill edges that I had put aside. I threw together a quick collage with the left over bits and this will become a cover as well. I think of all of the thigns that I created in this paint session, this piece is my favorite!!


So now I have lots of great pages all stitched for signatures, a bunch of painted papers yet to be torn and several really fun and different covers all ready to put together into journals. I have more work to do and I will share the finished journals with you very soon!!
have a great day!
Art On!!!!