Dos-a-Dos Handmade Books

The back to back journal in among the daisies

 

I signed up for the 21 Secrets 2013 online art journalling classes. It's a series of classes by different tutors which will remain accessible till the end of this year once you have paid your subscription fees. There is a sale on for this project for the month of July so a good time to give it a go if you're interested. $49 dollars is a small price to pay and I would have been quite happy to pay that just for the Dos-a-Dos videos.There is a wide variety of classes to choose from and I have done quite a few of them already such as the Sparkle-Arkle one (of course!!). But the one that so far has stolen my heart is the Dos-a-Dos (French for back to back) handmade book one by Roben-Marie Smith. So clearly explained and with a gorgeous end-product that proved irresistible to me.

It starts with instructions on how to paint a 9 x 12 page that will be used as the base of the book. I went ahead and made 2 just in case one didn't work out well. I have to admit that because I do this in my painting shed where there is no electricity I tried to remember as much of what Roben-Marie said on the video as possible and then in the shed tried to recall and do it all. In the end I simply went with what felt right to me and these 2 pages above and below were the result.

I could not begin to tell you just what I all used but it did include lots more stencils than Roben-Marie used in her pieces. I just love that spray paint!

Then I proceeded to make two Dos-a-Dos books following Roben-Marie excellent video instructions as well as two examples of the Bonus Project she also added to her class. They use the remnants of the items used for the larger book such as the bottom bit of a paper bag and copies of your painted pages. You can see these little beauties above. They make an ideal size of sketchbook to put into a handbag.

Here is the front (with button closure) of one of my books

And this is the other side. The journal can thus be opened from both sides and each side has a separate signuture of watercolour pages inside.

You can see how it works a bit better on the above picture where the upright book is spread out. It looks like this from the other side too.
Enough said! I recommend you sign up for class without delay if you like this project. I can't wait to discover other gems of classes included in the 21 Secrets 2013 during the coming months (although they might have to wait a bit till the weather outside isn't quite so lovely).

PS for some reason Blogsy has published this with Thursday's date, probably because that's when I wrote the text. The pictures were added today. Will try and remedy the situation once I'm on my mainframe computer. And as you can see, that worked!

 

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