Sunday, May 27, 2012

Book: Green Scale Brick

Name: Green Scale Brick
Size: Size 1, Brick
Cover: All Leather
Pages: 500 (approxi)
Paper: 75 lb
Estimated Value: $20.00
Description: The Green Scale Brick is an all-leather cover, size 1, "Brick" journal with a tie closure and press work and leather dye elements.

Process:

Bricks are one of the easier journals for me to make and the design is something that I use for experimentation in covers. There's not a lot of cover material in a size 1 journal so I can afford to try new stuff. the different between a size 1 journal and a 'brick' is the number of pages. Bricks will have double the number of pages for an average size journal. For this project the pages are 75 lb, heavy weight 'construction paper' that takes ink, charcoal and paint very well.

Once I had the book block (the bound section of pages) finished and dressed (the edges were cut and the spine rounded), I cut out a piece of 2-3 ounce Craftsman Tooling Leather (from Tandy Leather) and started to lay out the basic space I would have to experiment within.

The design for this book started with a simple, quarter-inch border around the cover. It creates a 'framework' in which I can plug any design I want. Once I had the border lined, I added small dots with one of my leather stamps to break up the empty space of the border.

Then I wanted to get into some cross-hatching for the cover and see what would the effect be with such thin leather.

As you can see, Bricks are wide books. This one measure around 2 inches thick.

Normally I use 3-4 ounce leather for my books but wanted to try something thinner to see what would happen. Once the grid was put onto the cover and pressed, I started work on the dye process.

Leather dying is a pain. It's the one 'random' factor in making a book that I'm still working on. For this project I wanted to see if I could marble the leather to give it a mottled, lizard-like quality and I think I've achieved it. I left the outer edge the base 'green' color that I used as a reference for what I had to start with when I began altering the colors of the main body.

Once I had the cover dyed and marbled the way I liked it, I added a simple, string closure (mainly because anything too thick would stand out along the center of the book so I kept it thin) that one could tie closed.

For end-papers, I'm experimenting with marbling colored paper. I think it looks need and is kind of cool for a green-covered book.



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