Kraftex watercolour book.

This month on Dragonfly Dreamers Monthly Exploration facebook group the theme is watercolour. I'm not a watercolour artist by any means but I do like to play with it and it sometimes finds it's way into my mixed media projects. 

So the first thing I needed to do is make a watercolour book to play in.

I decided to try a few new things while making my book. As a carry-over from last month's theme of  'use it or lose it', I decided to do the cover with some Kraft-Tex paper that I have had for a while but haven't tried yet.  It's an interesting paper that they describe as leather like and can be sewn like fabric. I was pleased to discover that it played very well with the watercolours.

Layer one.

I used Daniel Smith and Twinkling H2O watercolours. The first layer I painted with a very generous amount of water. While still wet I sprinkled coarse salt on and let dry completely before wiping off the salt. This gives an interesting texture to the paint. 

To learn more about this technique watch this video. For my book cover I didn't use the isopropyl as I did in the video.

Watercolour, isopropyl and salt.

Layer two.

For the second layer I used Lindy's Gang Magical powder with a stencil. This is a pigment powder with mica. Unfortunately it's not noticeable on the picture but it has a lovely shimmer to it.

French Link Stitch

Now to put it all together. For the inside pages I used a 140 lb watercolour cold press paper. The final size of the book is about 8" square. To stitch it together I tried a new technique called French Link stitch. To help learn this stitch I used a book I have called Little Book of Book Making by Charlotte Rivers and watched this great video by Jennifer of Sea Lemon.

French Link Stitch.

Finished book

I'm sure I will do a little bit more playing with my covers but for the most part it is done and I'm pretty happy with my first attempt at the French Stitch binding method. 

If you'd like to see what everyone is doing with the 'watercolour' theme this month come join us at DDMET.

Happy Creating!

Wendy