Stenciled and Shaped Handmade Books

Hi everyone! This is Gwen back today to share a new project for you to try with your stencils. Lately I've been in a bit of a book-making phase, and this month I wanted to try and step it up a bit and expand my repertoire by going outside of the box... literally! I decided to bypass the traditional rectangular books for something a bit more fun... shaped books made from stencil designs!

I started by gathering up some supplies... a piece of chipboard I'd saved from a package I got in the mail at some point (you can use bookboard or cardboard too,) stencils, gesso, paint, stamps, and ink.

Getting started on the book, I used my gesso, ink, stamps, and a few 4x4 stencils (Mini Tower Stairs Stencil by Mary Beth Shaw and Journal Texture #8 by Pam Carriker.) to create the background. Then I used the Dragon Stencil by Mary Beth Shaw to create the main "shape" for my book.

This stencil is great for this because it actually works as a mask, so you can see the layers underneath through the body of the dragon. I love the effect! Then I went through with my trusty Liquid Pearls to do a little outlining and detailing in preparation for the next step.

Next, time to turn this into a set of book covers. With a little measuring and some slightly tough cutting, it was finally starting to look like a bit more like book in the making!

Then I did the back side of both covers using some paint and the Flower Tiles stencil by Mary Beth Shaw.

For the binding, I challenged myself to learn coptic binding (or more accurately re-learn it, although it had been so many years since I did it last that I'm not sure it actually counts!) I found a coptic binding tutorial on Pinterest that I followed - it goes through creating the template and doing the stitching and I found that it worked pretty well (although, if you're a lefty like me, you'll probably have to flip some of the directions to do them the opposite way. But it's not too hard to figure out.)

 

And voila!  A stenciled, shaped, coptic-bound book. 

I really love how this turned out... so much that I've since made two more from different stencils with different themes. I love how this gives you the ability to turn stencils that at first glance might seem to have limited use into really unique handmade books... they work as notebooks, sketchbooks, mini scrapbooks, or art journals... whatever you want!

I hope you enjoyed today's project, and if you happen to be in the New England area, I'm going to be making this book (with two other options, all made from StencilGirl stencils) as one of three stencil classes I'm teaching in Westbrook, Connecticut October 17th-18th. If you're interested, keep an eye out on my blog for details!

Until next time,
Gwen Lafleur