Alphabet Book Sculpture

I need to work on some catchier titles for my work. This is a cool little book I made out of the practice pages I did with my new ruling pen. I used an old book entitle "Ancient History" (which wasn't a very long book for whatever reason) for paper because I really like the art I see on Etsy made out of recycled books and thought I should have a go. The paper was actually a little slippery, and this type of pen works best on rough paper because when it catches on the ridges you get a cool splatter pattern, but nevertheless, I got some pretty neat sheets out of it.

My favourites I cut up and made into a star ornament book. And it turned out pretty cool in the end, too! After I'd made a giant mess first, of course.

It's nice to have a new listing up on Etsy, since I've been occupied with other things for some time and mostly just relisting older books or making custom ones. (Which I love, but sometimes it's nice just to put something new out there).

On to the bits about how this all came together. I started out basically just scribbling all over the pages of the old book, experimenting, trying different combinations, thicker and thinner settings on the pen, figuring out how it worked with masking fluid, etc etc.

When I had scattered the entire floor with sheets I gathered them up to see if I'd made anything worthwhile. I made a pile of my favourites to use to decorated the book I had made out of an old calligraphy project that did not turn out well at all, but was on some very nice, thick, smooth paper.

I covered every second square with the calligraphy sheets, overlapping all the edges and corners so the there would be nothing showing through when I put the other squares on top. I hate when there are gaps in between tiled pieces!

When all of that was done I decided I needed another section of the star book, so I ripped off some of the calligraphy sheets and added another bit of the structure. Bad idea! It's didn't form a nice ball when I did that, so I ripped it back off and had to fix all the edges.

When that was all done I made the covers out of leather. The front has a raised 'A' and the back a 'Z', and the leather cord is set so that it has to be wrapped in strange directions instead of a nice neat straight line.