Repurposed Artwork for New Journal

At an art retreat in 2010, I made this accordion face book after being inspired by one that Judy Wise made and showed me. The blog post about the art retreat demonstrates how I created the pages with collage, tracing paper faces and painted backgrounds.

I decided to use these faces in a journal I'm making.  I scanned each face and made a montage of the faces in Photo Shop.  One for the front cover and another for the back cover.

I re-sized the photo montage and added a scanned background.  Then I took the front and back cover papers to FedEx to make color copies.  The laser copies last longer than the ink jet copies.

I'd already purchased a  hard bound book at the Dollar Store, cut out the text block with an X-acto knife.

The Xyron machine adds a permanent adhesive to the back and makes it easy to glue to the book cover.

Here both the front and back covers are glued to the hardback cover.

I cut a strip of black suede paper to cover the spine of the book and ran it through the Xyron machine, too.

For inside the book cover, I glued the background paper using the same method.  The bone folder helps to seal the adhesive.

The book cover is now ready for its paper signatures.  First, I have to decide how the book is to be used.  If water media will be used, the signature pages need to be a paper that takes water well, watercolor paper for example.  If I plan to draw and sketch in the book without water media, I'll make the signatures out of drawing paper. 

I'll bind the signatures into the journal like I did for my Oaxaca, Mexico travel journal seen HERE.  The same method was used to make this travel journal.  I used fabric vs. paper for the book cover.