Book embellishments

During the Books of the Earth class we discussed and tried several page embellishment techniques, but had limited time to use them with the books we created.  When I returned home all manner of other things got in the way of working on my books.  Recently I was able to spend some time exploring the techniques we discussed in class as well as other ideas I have read about for adding special touches to my finished books.

Mica encasements

I used thin sheets of mica to cover interesting bits of paper and pressed flowers.  If the mica was thin and the item was small I simply used pH neutral PVA to glue them in place.  The pressed flowers and mica in the photo to the right were glued to a small piece of handmade paper that was then glued to the page.  I left space at the bottom of the page for a bit of text.

Thicker pieces of mica can be attached to a page using small brads.  The object to be covered is first glued to the page.  Then the page is placed on a piece of wood and the mica is position over the image.  Hold the mica in place as you carefully punch or drill holes through the mica and page.  Below is an example of mica fastened using small brads.  I burned a small window in the preceding page creating a small reveal.

Be aware, adding paper, mica, pressed flowers and brads all add additional thickness to the page.  These additions can cause the book to gape.  You can offset the added thickness by removing pages or adding windows.


Pages with windows

This can be used to reveal some of the contents.  To make rectangular and square windows I use a 6 inch narrow metal ruler, a small piece of mat board and a sharp X-Acto retractable pen knife to carefully make small precision cuts.  Below is the finished page window and the rusted imprint that was glued to the following page.

As previously mentioned, windows can also be used to offset the thickness of added items.  In the photo to the right I cut rectangular openings in three pages to offset the thickness of a small rectangular piece of oxidized copper I had added to a page.