10: Art is Magic: Make Create Express 23-24

 Empty Bowls Art Journal with Pamela Vosseller

This project included making the decorative papers, the cover, and the pages that are in the journal.  The closure is made from a wooden spoon.  Its handle fits through a paper loop attached to the cover paper before it's glued down.

This is the front cover, which was made by crumpling deli paper, and pressing it onto a gel plate with different acrylic paint colors, letting it dry, and then gluing it onto the cut backing.  The front and back covers were made the same way, but from different pulls off the gel plate, so they are a bit different:

The pages are made by cutting the decorative papers to shape and gluing them onto handmade paper from India, and adding marks, using black and white pens and other colors for mark making.  Then the paper is glued onto larger black cardstock:

And this is the back:

I used a thin red string to wrap around the book and tie it off by hooking it under the spoon.

This project was one of my favorites and took the longest of the classes I've taken so far in Make Create Express 23-24.  I had to order the black cardstock and the handmade paper from India.  When everything was ready, all the steps took a while, and I took my time to get things right or re-do them if the first pass didn't work out.  

This kind of handmade artwork is so much fun to do, especially since mistakes are expected and add to the preciousness of the finished piece.