Journal from an old book Pt. 1

Hello Lovelies! I finally got around to posting again this week. Yay! I will start out by posting pictures of an already finished journal I've made. I didn't take pictures as I worked because honestly I wasn't sure it would work. It did though, and I'm glad. I love it!

 

 

 

I'm working on another journal made from an old book cover. This one I don't think I'll have to embellish on the outside at all. I think it's beautiful.

 

This isn't a great picture, but everything is in gold relief. The emblem on the front cover is a gold iris. The cover is slightly distressed but it won't take much to age it a bit more. The gold lettering and swan to me just add a bit of elegance. Much needed for shabby chic junk journals I think.

To get the cover off I used an X-Acto knife and a ruler and my hands. It's that easy.

 

First I lined up the ruler where I wanted to make my cut. If you look down the spine, you can get an idea of where the end pages attach the text block to the cover. What you want to do is cut very gently. Don't go too deep or you'll cut the spine right from the covers. I just scored lightly, then scored again. I just wanted to cut through the two layers of paper there. After you get through the paper there is a layer of backing material. It's usually a webbing type of material.

 You just keep going down both sides of the hinge until the entire text block is removed.

 

 

There you are! You have removed the guts of the book! You can now use the book pages for anything your heart desires, and you have a cover for  journal, or you make a book safe out of it to hide your valuables or your treasured trinkets.

 

Here I've measured the spine. You can tell where to measure because of the wear marks on the spine. You will almost always have a gap between the actual spine and the book boards on case binding. It allows for the hinge to do it's job and your book to open and close correctly.  I will be cutting a piece of card stock to use as a hidden spine to sew my signatures on to so I don't mess up this beautiful spine. You can however sew your signatures in anyway you see fit. There are long stitch methods that can be found all over the internet. Just use your Google Fu and let your fingers do the walking. Youtube has a ton of tutorials on signature sewing, and you can find the one that you like best.

That's all for now, next week I'll post the signature sewing and embellishing! See you then!