WIP Cardboard Book

I know it's been several days, but I've been very busy with a lot of projects, all still wips, which I will share with you as I can. Hope you enjoy my first handmade book tour, even if it is in a prelimanary state! :)

This was the last project in Katie Kendrick's Layered Impressions workshop, a cardboard book. My book is very much a learning experience, so there are boo-boos, but I am very proud of what I learned and accomplished. The covers and pages are out of brown cardboard, and there is a fabric insert of four pages. The whole thing still has a lot of stuff that I want to do, but I thought I'd go ahead and share it now, then again when it's finished.

Above is the cover with a niche and carving in the cardboard. The niche has a background and a wild turkey feather with a copper band within it. I now know that I should have used a light background so the feather would show up better. The "window" is made of mica stitched on with copper metallic embroidery thread, because I couldn't find my bookbinding thread. I also didn't have cheese cloth, so I glued fun yarn to the page and cover edges on three sides and used cotton fabric on the spine, which will be covered with something else when it's finished.

This is the back cover, which will have more work done to it when finished.

The first two cardboard pages with the basic layer done...The scanner bed is not quite long enough to pick up the whole page, but you get the idea. The pages are all already stitched into the spine. The face was drawn with my non-dominant hand and will look much better when it's finished, I hope. There will also be text on the pages at the end.

The next two pages, cardboard on the left, fabric scraps on the right. I plan to add buttons, stitching, and other elements to the fabric pages before hand stitching the sides together. I love my polka dotted cat!

Next two fabric pages: The one on the left is an old hand embroidered picture that was in a basket of stuff I bought at a yard sale years ago. I knew it would come in handy sometime!

Fabric page on the left and painted cardboard on the right. Part of it is cut off, but it's a large tulip. For now, it's white, but who knows how it will transform as I work on it!

Painted cardboard pages: The face was drawn with my non-dominant hand and has a long way to go. The right page has magazine images, which will be transformed as I go along, pasted to a painted background.

The last two painted pages with a germ of an idea and more left handed drawing, plus a hand cut paper dog.

That's the tour! At least for now! I've had a ball getting the book to this point. Closed, it is almost two inches thick, and I love all the hairy turquoise yarn on the edges! So happy that Katie included this in her workshop, and I am so excited to finish the pages and make another one!

Hope something on here made you smile! :)