Book Exchange 2008

Front Cover

At our Rubber Stamping Club last year we had a round-robin book exchange. Those taking part were split into groups of 5 or 6 people and we each chose a theme for our own particular book.

We made or bought a book and decorated the covers and the first couple of pages to complement our design – mine was Oriental and I made the cover with some heavy card, ribbon, strips of hand-made paper, leather and bamboo skewers.

It was finished with fibres and hand-made beads, some from shrink plastic (the black ones) and others from duct tape and wire (and UTEE). I didn’t see the book until it came back to me at the end of the project – I am absolutely delighted with the way it turned out and fascinated with the different interpretations of the same theme.

Back Cover

Ribbon

Fibres and beads

Beads

Beads2

Beads3

Inside Covers

Inside the front cover I used some  images which I printed onto glossy photo paper and the inside of the back has more of the same and also the front of a birthday card made for me by my friend, Janet.

Inside Front

Inside Back

Poppy

My Pages

My 2 Pages

This shows the first two pages of my book – the pages were all made from a heavy watercolour paper and I stamped lightly over the plain cream with a green chalk ink in a bamboo design.

The black shrink plastic strips distorted whilst shrinking but I think it gives quite a pleasing effect – nothing ‘hand-made’ should be perfect!

I used my favourite grid technique on the left side with several oriental images (just realised…they’re almost all Non Sequitur – again!) and a shrink plastic embellishment in the middle. The ‘crane’ stamp there was just stamped with black ink.  A few coins and a bit of ribbon on the right-hand page along with the same ‘crane’ stamp but this time I tired the ‘kissing’ technique with a decorative background stamp and some gold embossing powder and then again with clear powder over the green/black version.

Grid

Shrunken Cranes

'Kissing' Cranes

Rachel

Both Pages

Geisha

Mini Book

Gloria

Both Pages

Mizuhiki Knot

Gloria

Sue

Both Pages

flag Pages

Geisha

Jo

Both Pages

Kimono

Close-up

Jan

Both Pages

Caught-in-Crystal

Geishas

Honeycomb Paper

Close-up

Puzzle & Cushions