Two books

A while ago a coworker gifted me this:

A whole roll of beautiful recycled wallpaper that she had removed from her walls. Because it's such strong material it is still in very good condition and she thought I might be able to use it for something artsy. Well duh! I was delighted with it, just look at the beautiful color and design!

So  recently I decided that the first thing I would do with it would be to make her a little gift. Of course being me it would have to be a handmade book. I decided on a one signature sketchbook with good Fabriano artist's paper inside and the wallpaper to cover the outside. Here's how it turned out:

The cover is made of 400gsm acrylic paper and covered with the wallpaper with the help of gel medium.

I bound it wit a narrow piece of ribbon and I really liked how that worked.

I covered the insides of the cover with some cardstock in a matching colour and decorated it with butterflies from the wallpaper.

The book has about twenty pages in it and is A5 in size. Filled with 160gsm white paper.

This is the whole cover. As you can see the ribbon ads a nice touch.

The wallpaper turned out to be perfect for this use. It's a very forgiving material and doesn't buckle or anything.

I intend to make more books with this wallpaper. Lord knows I have a enough of the stuff for at least a couple of dozen. But the flowers and butterflies on it also make for beautiful collage elements, so nothing of this will go to waste. ;-)

After cutting the papers and coverpaper to size I had some left overs and decided to make another book with those. A little one this time and very simple indeed.

The cover is again the acrylic 400 gsm paper, this time painted with gouache.

I painted the inside papers too this time.

I did that before I bound them so the combinations would be a random surprise.

The inside paper is again 160gsm drawing paper by Fabriano.

The paint gives the paper a completely different look and feel though.

You can see the acrylic paper gives way cooler effects. I stamped on the word 'notes' to finish it up.

The second book is also bound with a ribbon. I have no idea what I will do with it yet or even if I will ever use it, but it was a fun little experiment to see how it would look. I really do enjoy making such simple little books. Hope you enjoyed having a look at them too.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy Wednesday!