Handmade Travel Journal

Since the first bird journal is 95% done, I needed a new journal to take with me on my travels. My father is having knee replacement surgery on Monday and I'm going to stay with him for a while until he settles in at home to my satisfaction. Living alone is extra difficult at times like these. I need something to work on while spending hours at the hospital this week.

As a quick Saturday project, I pulled out a sheet of Fabriano watercolor paper, tore in into 5.5" strips and then tore those in half. I folded them in half, burnished the crease, and stacked them into five signatures of two pages each.

Then I looked up a video of coptic stitch book binding and stitched them together with a length of pearl cotton. Much easier than I expected!

Finally, I slathered Golden Fluid Acrylics all over the pages in a totally carefree (and messy!) way, knowing that this is just the base that will change dramatically with more layers. No worries, just get some color on there. Any color, every color.

Ready to go. I've packed my travel art supplies: fine tip markers, watercolor pencils, a water brush, white ink, glue pen, and tiny scissors. I gathered and printed a stash of bird images to collage.

Hopefully, I'll get to upload interim images this week of my work in it. Of course, I'm also taking my reagular Moleskine journals that I sketch projects in. Some of those to post as well.