Small books

My friend Philippa writes poetry, and has been keen to learn how to make some small books so that she can make some to write in and perhaps give as gifts. We have talked about having a play day for a while now, and today was finally the day.

Started with an old book of the Famous Five

- falling to pieces so easy to pull pages out and lovely raggy papers to use.

Folded 3 pages in half and nested them together to make a signature (pen to give you an idea of size of book) 
We talked about 'found poetry' within a page.

This was a quick example I showed her, using neocolor water soluble crayons for the background.
Then we set to playing with gesso, watercolour paints, stamps, punches, some Parisian images, and this was her poetic result :

Front cover

You can see the stitching to hold the book in place in the middle.

Back cover

We stitched the pages together through the spine and it was so inspiring for her to go home with the book almost complete. Love all the different types of text used, the highlighted words and that she has created a wee story through the book.
We also had a look at how to make a book out of a rectangle of paper. You fold it in half lenghwise, and then in half again twice.

Then you cut down the middle between the 2 middle divisions only.

Lastly you pull it together to make a book.

We used another page from the Famous Five book so this example is quite small, but an A4 sheet of watercolour paper makes quite a useful size.

Again - gessoed to look aged, and Philippa is going to just add stamped images and words to this.
Finally, I was inspired by the watercolours, punches and found poetry to create my card for Day 3.