Books again - exploring covers

Looking for something a bit different from the painted and printed papers I've mostly been using for covers, folded over padded card and stuck down.  I'm interested in stitching on fabric, here filling the space with lines of running, back, chain stitches and whipping or lacing them, then patching in couched cords or extra stem or herringbone lines to fill any gaps.  The stitching is done here on a sort of muslin plus wadding, and i've laced the pieces over the card.  Now why didn't I take a photo of the back!

 The text block is stitched over tapes - ribbons here, plus endpapers of folded card, which will be stuck to the boards.

This is paper again, but it is torn bits overlapped and machine stitched down to a piece of brown paper - recycling envelopes.  The painted bits are brown paper too.  The signatures lined up all have a painted folio on the outside.  No tapes for this one, so the painted folds will be visible under and between the stitched lines joining the signatures. 

Finishing off

Books that i had in various states of unfinishedness during the classes i've been running, have now been completed. One with pages half A5 folded, with painted paper stuck to card covers, longstitch binding over ribbons, and a large silver brad to wind a cord round for a closure.

Longstitch again, with the long stitches linked into each other to form a herringbone stitch effect.  As usual the cover is cereal packet with oil pastels, and in this case, a wash of coloured inks over.

While painting the cover, instead of washing leftover colour from the brush I painted it out onto a sheet of paper.  This was then torn up to form the outer folio of three of the signatures (the pages in this book are one third A4).  I like the look of the coloured pages here and there in the book.

Another painted paper stuck to card cover and stitching over tapes, in this case plain white cotton tape painted to go with the book.  The lesson to be learned with this one was not to leave the covers in the hot sun, even though they had been left to dry under weights, because they bent a bit.

Holiday reading . . .

. . .on a cold day.  The next best thing to reading books is to make them!  These two were made by eldest daughter Claire and granddaughter Rebecca at one of a series of 'informal book making' classes I'm running at home at the moment, and were finished off on holiday in Cornwall last week (pix to come).

I'd made this one earlier, using Inktense pencils to colour the cover . . .

. . .and this one on holiday, printing the pattern in acrylic paint with a wine bottle cork, and putting a watercolour wash over.

Hannah made this one, a concertina fold with pamphlet stitched pages in the valley folds.

Then Claire made this one . . .

. . . and this one.

. . . and this one!

Hannah (left) and Rebecca (right) made these, using the cork.

And here's the class ones again, closeup of the stitching, to which Claire added some beads and a twisted place marker looped into one of the stitches at the top.

The covers are all made from corn flakes packet card.  Those that aren't printed with the cork have been coloured by drawing on the inside, the uncoloured side, using oil pastels, including metallic ones, then putting a watercolour wash over.  The coloured side of this cereal packet card I have found needs to be painted over with black acrylic paint to hide the colour, but the other side does take the other mediums pretty well.

Hello, I'm still here . . .

. . . and will try to stay this time, a reformed character, keeping my blog more up to date with pix of visual interest and inspiration . . . I very much hope so anyhow. So here are some things I have been making lately - beads, from coloured magazine pages. There is nothing complicated about them, you simply cut long strips of paper, roll them up round a knitting needle or similar rounded stick thing, and apply glue to the last bit of the strip so that it sticks itself to the roll. If you want cylindrical beads you cut a straight strip. If you want a more rounded effect you cut a wedge shaped strip. You start rolling at the wide end, keep the narrowing strip in the centre as you roll, and it builds up a more rounded shape.

I made a book cover from nappy liners. There was a workshop online using dryer sheets and not knowing quite what they were I decided to try nappy liners, which I thought might be similar. They aren't really, but they gave a nice result.

I put 3 liners together, having printed and painted some colour on them. They don't take colour so very well, but enough for the purpose. I then stitched them together onto a piece of felt, with free machine stitching all over. Then a little zap with a heat gun and a bit more stitching.
Then I neatened the edges, wrapped some cord by zigzagging over threads, and couched that down, leaving ends to wrap round a button to fasten and threaded on some of my paper beads to look decorative.The piece was just the size of the book opened out, so I had to attach separate panels to each side to make pockets into which the book covers could be pushed. The book happened to be one I had made, A5 size, but any could be used.
It feels nice to handle, and was easy to stitch, so is on the list of 'Try that again sometime' ideas.