Travelers Journals 2

Next step on these guys is painting time! I went ahead and applied gesso to the 10 covers...two books' covers are shown below...

 Then came the fun painting time!

 Followed by a blackwash to make them look lovelier...

 Somewhere in between the making of the covers I got the pages going by cutting in half regular white copy paper 11x8.5. I then mixed up the dye for the pages using diluted acrylics, various tea bags and coffee. Once i had the desired dye color i poured enough of it into a glass pan and began dipping the individual pages into it. To dry all these babies up i placed a metal table outside and began laying them down to dry. The lovely thing about being in my hometown for the summer is its beautiful warm 100 degree weather, the kind that wraps you in a nice warm burning hug as soon as you step outside! :) So having such a weather, any projects i work on during the summer dry pretty quickly if placed outside!

As i was laying them down on the metal table i took a needle tool and ripped off at the edges a bit here and there... I figured each book would use 40 pieces...

 Each book would have 10 magazines of 4... then using a scrap piece of paper i measured where i would like the holes to be...got a needle tool and punched thru the magazines one by one to end up as what you see below...

For the 10 covers i decided to line their inside with darker paper, so i dipped these in a darker dye, mostly compromised with diluted black acrylic...

Next step on these guys is getting the stitching string ready, along with finishing up the inside of the covers...and some other stuff...