I Love Making Journals

I don't know what it is but I love making journals/books of all kinds. The construction of this book was inspired by a class I took with Kelly Kilmer, who teaches all over the United States and a really great person. This one was constructed with a book that had all the pages taken out of it and painted with acrylic paints. The canvas piece was also painted with acrylic paints and adhered to the book covers with gel medium. The inside of the book has two signatures of 140 pound Wassau papers. I loved learning about this paper because it really holds up well to a lot of paint layers, etc. I call it a cheaper alternative to watercolor paper and I use it a lot in making my decorated papers. You can buy this by the piece or ream at places like Kelly Paper, Paper Zone, etc.

I added some of my metal findings on the spine while I was sewing in the signatures. Some other metal pieces are hanging from just a skin of tar gel and acrylic paints. The acrylic skin was one of those things that I created when playing around with tar gel and acrylic paints. I liked how it looked and then had the idea of adding the metal pieces to it.






Here are a couple other books that have been made in the same style as the one above. On the first one I rubber stamped on the canvas spine and inside the book. On the green/blue one I used a crackle medium so the color underneath showed through.