A New Year, A New Start

 Since my "junk journal", that was bound with washi tape, was completed at the beginning of the month, it was time to create a new one. I decided this one would have a coptic stitch binding. I took me forever to put this one together. I worked on it in dribs and drabs for two weeks. 

The paper for the cover is gel printed using multiple layers of acrylic paint and a stencil. The signatures are mixed media paper. The mixed media paper is less expensive than watercolor paper and it should hold up to multiple layers of paints, ink, and pastels.

This is the fourth coptic stitch bound book that I have made and this one has the fewest mistakes! I had one row of stitching wrong but caught it before moving forward so I was able to pull it out and make the correction. I wanted to give it an embellishment so I dug through my bead box and found this little do-dad of beads and copper wire to tie on. I think I made it when I was practicing make swirls with wire. After looking through my box I am inspired to incorporate some raku fired beads or buttons into a future journal.

So here I am with lots of blank pages staring at me. Putting down the first marks are the hardest.