Had so much fun during the process of making this painting, thought I’d share!
Preparing the Surface
- Start with a DIY Masonite Panel (or any hard surface) & stack of old leftover book pages (or any paper good for collaging).
- Mod Podge pages to the board – in a pattern or not, just cover the whole thing. Use the mod podge as a glue, putting it directly on the board then smoothing the pages over the top.
- Paint the board with white acrylic – use a big brush and not a lot of paint. You don’t want to cover the whole thing so the texture and color of the book pages come through.
- Once the paint is dry use your handy putty knife to scrape at it a while to give it a warn look. Don’t be afraid to dig into the pages and tear up small edges and corners.
- Paint over it again with the white acrylic if you’d like.
- Then you have a wonderful texture-y surface to draw or paint on!
Painting with Tissue Paper
- Sketch out the elephant or whatever shape/animal you’d like.
- Find a sheet of tissue paper that will cover the whole shape you want to fill in.
- Fill in the shape with a gluestick, it doesn’t have to be exact but it’s better to be a little out of the lines than inside.
- Carefully smooth the tissue paper over the glue’d areas – using a tissue works well for smoothing.
- Once it’s all covered and dry cut around the shape with an exacto and remove the extra tissue.
- At that point I drew over the elephant again with a dark pencil line but do whatchya want!
I made a smaller version on paper with a cute little elephant stamp I found at Jo-Ann’s too!
This is part three of the ‘Binder Series‘ –
Previous posts: The Bee Planner and The Repurposed Book Binder
Here are a few people and notebooks I’ve been inspired by in my Binder research!
Bastiano
One of my favorite book makers is Bastiano – if you want to see amazing stitch, collage and book art go here.
NYX Creations
NYX has put together a REALLY cool binder tutorial using binder rings, cardboard and collage.
Remains of the Day
I recently signed up for Remains of the Day by Mary Ann Moss, a ‘Shabby Journal of Scraps’ online tutorial site.
Mary Ann’s video tutorials focus a lot on laying out different fabrics, book binding and creating paper pockets and all sorts of wonderful pages and collage techniques to fill books with. Check out all her lovely journal pages on flickr here.
I made this roll-up pencil pouch a while ago and had really been wanting to use the sewing/collage technique again. Super inspired I set out to make a Binder to match using the slip-cover method explained in Remains of the Day for the notebook cover.
This is part two of the ‘Binder Series‘ – View part one here: The Bee Planner
The Repurposed Book Binder
The toughest part of this project is finding the perfect book. The spine of the book has to be a bit bigger than the height of the 2-ring metal binder piece, in this case it was one inch tall. Make sure it’s wide enough for a paper size you’re comfortable with too, remember to add about half the width of the binder clip.
Materials
- → An old book
- → Cheap 2-ring 3×5 notecard binder from office supply store
- → Spray adhesive
- ♥ DIY Planner Templates to fill the inside!
First you want to remove the pages from the inside of the book. It’s important to keep the very first and very last pages that are attached to the covers intact – these are called the endpapers. Go a few pages into the first signature and spread the pages apart until you can see the stitching. Using an exacto knife carefully cut the thread.
Once you’ve cut all the threads look behind the first page, you should be able to pull the pages away from the endpaper. It will probably be attached with adhesive but should pull apart easily, especially if it’s an older book. Once the endpaper is released cut through the book tape with scissors to completely release the inside pages.
Do the same to the back of the book so that you’re left with only the cover and the endpapers.
Next, fold both endpapers open and mark/cut them so that they’re the width of the spine.
Use the spray adhesive and attach the endpapers to the spine. I put down the back section first then the front, but do whatever works best for you book. The white sheets of paper are to protect the rest of the book from the adhesive.
Attach a piece of extra endpaper to the spine to hide the seams. Depending on the construction of your book this may not be necessary.
Last I attached the 2-ring metal binder piece. Instructions for doing this are in The Bee Planner post.
Now the fun part, filling the binder up! Thanks for reading, now go make something.
Make your own!
These ornaments are super simple to make, you just need a wooden block, an eye hook, gluestick and whatever else you want to glue or stamp on!
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Hello, I'm Amanda Hawkins. Ahhh-Design is where I post art, projects, diy planner templates, tutorials and more.
