Monday, May 24, 2010

Tiny Bard

I was at the local city library saturday and they had a table set up with really old books. I was in heaven. There was a small collection of shakespeare, the complete works, each in its own volume and about the size of an index card. I got to hold and look at some of them. Unbelievably cool.

I had some suede and an old book of his plays and wanted to make teeny book charms, each 1" x ~.75"







Zombie Books


I got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies postcards from Amazon a month or two ago and knew they needed to be book covers.



The last 3 were coptic stitch which turns out to be less work than with a spine but the variation is nice. They are all covered with scrapbook paper, then my super-awesome tea dyed fabric. The postcards are trimmed, glued and braded.




The pages were insane but worth it. I used copy paper. Then with acrylic paint and a spray bottle I hit one sheet with water, then wiped with watery paint (venetian red, some green, blue, etc with metallics) and sprayed again. I stacked the wet sides onto a dry sheet and only had to paint the one side. Then I let them dry outside or in if raining. When they were dry I stacked as much as I could under something big and flat. I ironed each sheet on a towel and stacked into piles of 20 then folded in half with a bone folder and each stack was put in a book press for at least 6 hours. Then I cut to size. There are a few sheets of scrapbook paper per signature too.


After everything was bound and dried I mixed some venetian red, alazrian crimson, cad red and a teeny bit of pthalo blue. It took a while mixing to find a good blood color that was more red than brown. I wiped my paint hands on each of the books and let them dry. After I signed and numbered all of them. I have more postcards so I'll definitely be doing more.