Patterns and Textures

It was chilly this morning morning and the little bit of precipitation yesterday left some interesting frozen puddles.

This one was especially artful....full of patterns and texture.

I made a small art journal for Kelly's birthday. It's been a while since I made one...but I do like using the buttonhole stitch binding technique. She prefers neutral colors...so I went with black and cream paper for the cover with lots of patterns and textures....just like the puddle.

This commercial paper came this way....with strips of the various patterned paper already glued together. 

I covered the cover boards and the two smaller spine pieces with the patterned paper cutting out the buttonhole in the middle. I lined the inside of the covers with another commercial paper.  

I folded 6 signatures. Each has a piece of watercolor paper and two other papers folded in...a combo of either graph paper, drawing paper, mixed media paper, and tracing paper. I think it's a nice mixture for a little travel sketch/art journal.

It's a simple binding technique....but inevitably I make an error or two. I loop over when I should loop under (or something) and my stitch connections don't stack up perfectly at the buttonhole opening.

The irony is that I found a video this afternoon that simplifies the stitch steps...so I'll know better next time. 

Here's the video.....I fast forwarded to the 38 minute mark for the binding technique. Jessica made it so much easier than the written instructions I was following. I should make another right away so I can put it into practice.

But there is beauty in imperfection...making this book a little less precious so it will be easier to be used and handled.... marked and spilled on.

I actually did spill a drop of glue right on the cover...so it's already broken in.