Presenting The Fully Handmade Book!

Over the past few months I have let you share in a lot of freebies and other pictures that featured elements for the 'big' project I was working on. With big I mean 'a lot of work' not so much 'a really large thing'. Inspired by the ROD journal I wondered if I could make a book that did not consist of remains of the day nor of pretty ready made papers and elements, but that would fully consists of stuff that I had made myself.

So I started painting papers and I started drawing labels and tags and borders. About ten days ago it all came together when I finally began constructing the actual book and I am proud to say I finished it and here it is:

I call it the Fully Handmade Book! The book measures about 12x16 cm, so it's about A6 size.

After making all the papers and elements, which took a lot of time, the cover was finished within a day. I had thought about maybe dying my own fabric too, but this pink fabric just called out to be used for this project so I decided against it. Maybe next time.

I did spice up the wrap around ribbon. I found it so utterly boring, even it is a beautiful blue color, that I decided to sew a load of buttons on both sides. It looks really cool, although I hadn't thought about how heavy it would make the ribbon ;-)

I added some ribbons to the fabric of both the outside and inside of the cover. I kept it simple, because the fabric itself is busy enough with all the stitching in all those bright colors.

The book consists of five signatures of 16 pages each. The signatures are hand sewn into the cover, but the rest of the book is fully machine stitched. All the papers were decorated by me and all the labels and borders and stickers were made by me as well. I made freebies of all the elements which can be found on my flickr. Feel free to use them.

I won't bore you with all the spreads, but here are a few just to give you an idea of what the inside of this book looks like.

 

I think I will use the book to collect quotes. It's too small for me to be a regular journal. For now it's just lying there looking pretty in my sewing room and every now and then I can look at it and be proud of my little big project! Hope you enjoyed looking at it too.

Wishing you a wonderful artsy week!