hand made book one

I am in the UK right now, possibly in Scotland but wherever I am at the moment, I am observing, documenting, sketching, painting, photographing and talking to people I have never met before. How exciting is that?? As exciting as this is, it will not fill this page so for your viewing enjoyment I am showing off an interesting book I made. It is interesting in two ways.

#1. I have not used commercial waxed linen that I buy from the Lima Beads Company. They have waxed linen in a massive array of colors and multiple choices of plys. I think I use 7 ply. They are hands down the best quality at the lowest price. This time however, I decided to use my own hand dyed embroidery threads. I used double threads and heavily waxed them using a votive candle. You can use beeswax which is softer and doesn't crumble but my beeswax was out in the Art Greenhouse plus the votive made the thread and my hands smell good. I LOVE this thread and it was such a good match.

#2 the design on the cover is traditional paste paper paint but while still wet, I used water soluble crayons to make marks on it. I have made this before but I doubt if I've shared it. 

You can see the 3-D quality of this paper because the crayon stretched the wet paper into grooves. I think this texture adds to the attractiveness of the book. This book and the next one are for sale for $45. free shipping if you are interested. They have the best mixed media paper and will take all the water you can add and not shred or warp.

Thanks for reading,
Beth