I mentioned in this post that I love making books for other artists. Some times, other artists are even willing to trade their art for mine. Win-win!
Abi and I were meeting up to do a photoshoot for BodSchool, my personal training business. She takes incredible photos and I wanted to bring a thank you gift that I could give her until I was able to make her official sketchbook.
In college, I purchased a book that teaches how to bind books without any glue. As you can imagine, that makes the process much quicker, as you don't have to wait for anything to dry!
I had some burlap scraps another friend had given me and decided that would be the perfect material to try something new.
I chose to make a "quarto" sized book (a fourth of a page) from 8.5 x 11 paper. The final size was roughly 4.25" wide x 5.5" tall...a great little book for stuffing in a purse or camera bag!
I burned the edges of the burlap to give it a more finished look (and also in hopes it would keep it from fraying so badly). Have you ever smelled burnt burlap?! Eww.
Since Abi loves green, I chose olive-colored paper for the pages. It also looks really great with the earthy burlap, don't you think?
The stitching I chose was Long Stitch/Link Stitch. The sections are sewn together so the stitches are exposed on the spine like this:
I really like how you could see the stitches if you knew to look for them, but that the twine also blended in nicely with the burlap.
This was a really fast book the make. The thing that took the longest was learning the new stitch, but even that went quickly once I got the hang of it.
Abi, thank you again for being willing to trade art! I love making unique things for unique girls like you!