Embossed Velvet Book

I mean it....Stop taking my photo!


Inner pages of my embossed velvet book. Vintage book page images, cut out and hand painted with Twinkling H2Os. These are artist quality watercolour paints with an iridescence.

The background to the images- the actual book pages are decorated using walnut ink. Sprayed on and encouraged to 'pool' in some areas, and colour 'lifted off' with paper towel in other areas. When wet, you can press things such as bubble wrap onto the surface and leave it there until the ink has dried. It leaves the marks behind- great pattern. You, of course, could place any number of things down on the wet surface to leave patterns- doileys, lace, paper towel, crumpled paper....

The cover is embossed velvet with the edge beaded.


An accordion book is simple to construct. Trick is the cover must be .2cm larger than the pages
all the way around. I make the covers first, and make the accordion to fit. I'm sure it's supposed to be the other way around.

For anyone who wants to have a go- here are my 'destructions'!

Illuminated Book

Additional Materials

• 180gsm water colour paper
• Paints and collage elements
• Gesso
• Extra Large sized Illuminations polymer stamp
• PVA
• Brushes
• Palette
• Stamps
• Antiqued paper or blank vintage paper
• Appropriate quote
• Craft velvet
• Decorative backing fabric
• Metallic machine embroidery yarn
• Sewing machine
• Beads
• Beading needle
• Glue Stick
• Yellow Rose Polished Pigment or metallic paint of your choice

Technique

1. Emboss two velvet pieces according to general instructions.
2. Use a glue stick to adhere velvet pieces (covers) to craft felt and decorative fabric to the backs.
3. Trim away excess fabric from embossed images leaving 1/8 inch seam allowance around both covers and stitch around edges to secure.
4. Switch to zigzag and stitch around the embossed covers several times using the metallic thread to cover raw edges.
5. Stitch beads along the edges for added decoration.
6. Cut and fold water colour paper into an accordion book to fit covers. Decorate pages as desired.

For my book, I have scraped gesso onto the pages and pressed an assortment of stamps into the surface. This leaves behind a subtle imprint which ‘takes’ paint a little differently. When dry, I ‘splodged’ and ‘splattered’ on Luminarte’s Twinkling H2O watercolour paints, letting the paints bleed and overlap each other. The colours were Honey Amber, Hot Cinnamon, Ginger Peach, Ginger Flower and Wild Plum.

7. When dry, further decorate with collage elements, stamps and words.
8. Stick the covers to each end page of the accordion book using PVA, fold up and leave between heavy books overnight.

And of course, all the stuff I use is available mail order from The Thread Studio.