Hello! It’s Robyn Wood with you today sharing a project featuring one of my favourite sources of inspiration – Paris. Paris is one of those cities that starts to steal your heart before you even set foot on its streets. I found it totally takes over your soul when you actually get to wander the cobbled streets and experience the most memorable of its sights, sounds, smells and tastes.
My project is a little mini book using some of the beautiful Parisian imagery from Prima and paper from a little book of writings by Voltaire. There is something about the look of the French language that I love. The book starts as a plain white sheet of paper and through folding, cutting, layering and inking morphs into the most delightful of little books.
Helmar glue is the perfect partner for putting a book like this together and helps make construction trouble free.
Supplies:
Helmar Premium Craft Glue
Helmar Professional Acid Free Glue
A4 sheet watercolour paper
Acrylic paints in pink, white and grey
Prima Love Story paper & ephemera
Darkroom Door Paris Filmstrip
Prima Sweet Sprigs stamps
Diamond pattern stencil
Gold acrylic ink
French book paper
Paper doyley, cheesecloth, pink pearls, eyelet & ribbon
Grey & pale green ink for stamping
Brown ink for sponging
Randomly paint a sheet of A4 watercolour paper with a mix of pink, grey and white acrylic paint. I have used rough strokes with a wide, flat brush and left the paint unblended so that you can still see some of the brushstrokes.
Stencil parts of the paper with white and grey acrylic paint and allow to dry.
Using a bone folder and scoreboard, divide paper into four equal sections along the long edge and in half along the short edge. Crease the folds well.
With the paper laid in landscape format, four panels across and two panels down – cut horizontally across the centre between the second and third pairs of panels. This will give you a horizontal cut in the middle of the paper.
Splatter paper with gold ink in a random manner, repeat with grey acrylic paint. Folding the paper first will give you a good idea of how the pages will look so you can insure that you get spatter across every one.
Fold paper into book shape by folding along the centre and using the split in the paper to allow it to form pages.
The book is open at the bottom so I used a small amount of Helmar Professional Acid Free Glue to adhere the opening closed. That will leave two sides with openings and I also glued one of them closed. The other was left open to have a little piece poking out.
Tear some pieces of French book paper and adhere randomly to some of the pages using Helmar Professional Acid Free Glue. This glue is perfect for light papers as they don’t buckle and warp.
Stamp some of the pages randomly with sprig style images using pale grey and light green inks.
Prepare a range of ephemera pieces using the Prima paper & ephemera packs or anything similar in the theme. Trim the Darkroom Door Paris filmstrip images and distress them a little using scissors or sandpaper. Ink around the edges of all the pieces and the edges of the book using brown ink. This will give everything a beautiful, aged look.
Layer pieces onto the pages of the book using Helmar Premium Craft Glue – I love how fast this glue dries but it still gives you a little working time to place the pieces exactly right. Create a little folded piece that can be tucked into the opening created above, this will give a little surprise to be discovered when viewing the book!
Don’t forget to place a tiny spot of glue behind any little pearls to keep them from going astray.
Set a small eyelet into the front cover and tie with ribbon, leaving a long tail that can be tied around the book. I should have moved pieces on the last page of my book over a little and set the eyelet into the back cover – the wonders of hindsight;)
I hope you have enjoyed learning how to create this project. I love making these mini books for all sorts of themes, they come together so easily. Until next time…
