Our Aqua Dragon...? What does that mean? Those are actually the nicknames for the books in this post, cleverly disguised as a title. :)
1. 'R' 2. Aquasteel 3. Fire Dragon
These were ordered by this great gal named Theresa out in California (I love knowing that my books are all over the country!) She'd placed a previous order, and wanted to get books for her son, daughter, and a close friend. She had a vague idea of what she wanted and I helped her make her ideas a reality.
She knew she wanted a version of Aquasteel for her friend, so that was an easy starting point, as far as materials go. For her teenage son Ryan, she wanted something masculine, yet neutral...pretty much the only thing you can find in terms of "masculine" scrapbooking paper is neutral anyway, but I digress... For her daughter Hope, Theresa wanted something a bit flashier. As it turns out, Hope is really fascinated by Asian culture and I had this amazing red bookbinding cloth with dragons and Chinese symbols on it. Win-win!
I must say that I do love making several books at once. I can get all my materials out at once and walk through each step for each book, knowing I'll only have to clean up once! :)
I started by cutting the davy boards to size (covers and spines) and covering them with the chosen bookbinding cloth.
Outside:
Inside:
Once the glue dried, it was time to add the embellishments and bookmarks, followed by the pages. Here's the final product for each book:
Look at how gorgeous this brushed silver is when combined with the aquamarine paper. Mmm.
The paste pages had a sort-of geometric floral pattern in white, tan, orange, pale blue, and teal.
Ryan's book had an embossed "R" on the cover.
The book cloth was the same kind I used for my sister Arica's book, blue at one angle, gold at another.
For the paste pages, I used a paper that resembled cork board.
The binding paper for Hope's book included dragons and Chinese symbols. I love the embroidery on this cloth!
Hope's book was square and had ribbon tie-closures.
...as well as red paste pages to help the cover paper POP! As a general rule: Busy outside pattern/simple inside paste pages; Simple cover paper/funkier inside paste pages. But of course there are exceptions every now and then. :)
Here's the trio, wrapped and ready to ship!
Thanks again for your order, Theresa! I was so happy to hear that everyone loved their books! Looking forward to making more for you in the future!