A New Journal

 Hi everyone. Happy new week.

Today for Leah's Art Every Day Month I want to share a new journal I made from an old book cover. I actually remembered to photograph it before I started filling in pages-smile.

I first removed all in the old inner pages from the book.  Before making any new inner pages, I took some duct tape and covered over the now empty spine of the book. I did this for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted to cover the embossed title of the original book. Secondly, I also want to strengthen my book spine for when bend it back to flatten pages to work on them.

I then made 3 signatures using white and colored papers. To do this I folded each paper in half and  stacked the pages I wanted for each signature together. I stitched each signature along that  fold ( the fold is where the book spine will be), and then I attached them into the book using an easy technique I learned. (And that you may already know.) 

Using some heavy duty double sided tape,  I took the outside page of the first signature and taped it onto the inside of the front cover. You can see in the above photo this page was orange, and there is a tiny strip of it peaking out  along the right side of the inner cover. 

I then repeated the same taping technique to attache the last page of the third signature to back inside cover.

After this, I used paper, tissue paper and some corrugated cardboard to cover the inner book covers where I had just taped down  my first and third signatures.  Covering up these pages hides any uneven edges and also helps keeps the the first and last signature tightly in place.

To attached the middle of the 3 signatures my journal has, I used a similar technique. I taped the front page of the second/middle signature to the back page of first book signature. I then taped the last page of the second/middle signature to the front page of the third/last signature.

If that isn't confusing, then I don't know what is-smile.

You can also make the entire inside of the book and then covered up your inside of the book covers.

You can now see all 3 signatures are attached to my book cover, and I now have a book with lots of assorted blank pages.

I didn't fuss about having my all pages the same size this time, although I have in other journals I have made. I like having different colors and also slightly varying sized pages.

Then it was on to the  outside covers of my new journal. 

Here is the front all completed. The back looks the same except there is no label maker tape and there is not window and figure behind it.

To make my covers unique, I decided to take a stencil and some light modeling paste to them. I very much like the texture design it created.

This part took awhile because I first stenciled the front and then had to wait for the modeling paste to dry (as I didn't want to it to lose the design) before moving onto the back. I repeated this process with the same stencil on the back cover. Once that dried I repeated the stencil on the spine.

I then took some teal-ish blue paint and painted over the edge where I had put the duct tape. Not that I minded seeing the duct tape, and I could have left that part plain, but I have done that before and wanted to try something new. If your duct tape isn't straight, then one thing you could do is stencil over it to hide that. 

The very front (and back) of this book cover was already this pretty dark blue color,  and I thought the stenciling  looked good on it, so I left that as is.

Once all this dried I added the TH label maker tape. I also added a TH person and a window chipboard from my stash. I squeezed in some clear glue to act as glass in my window.

And there you have it. Making the journal was easy and fun, and now I can have more fun filling it up.

I hope you have a super Monday.