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Stitched Book using Prepared Canvas Covers

Collage Cover Front of prepared canvas board

This is the first time I used prepared canvas boards for the covers and I found pros and cons. It's nice not to have to cut book board (no Kutrimmer yet at this house!), but the sizes of canvas board and paper signatures never match, so I did cut down the paper. Also, I like to cover my books with hand-decorated fabrics, which defeats the purpose of canvas. It was a quick and easy 8" x 10" cover, though, painted with an undercoating of acrylics which was then all ready for a paper collage adhered with Golden soft gel medium and glazed with same.

The binding is chain-stitched waxed linen. There are 9 10-page signatures. I take my Dremel and a round-pointed sanding tip and sand the edges of the binder-clipped signatures (all together, before stitching) to soften the edges, slightly round the corners, give it a bit of a worn look. Then I stain the edges with a Memories soft color or Ancient Page, something light like Sandalwood or Stone Gray. In this case I also rubbed down the exposed signature back edges with Memories soft gold.

Canvas Board Spine close up for more detail

And I almost always stitch a couple of mini-books into the whole somewhere. One effective example was a torn-up NG map of "Medieval England", about 1/3 the size of the main book pages, sewn in as its own signature. I tore the edges and stained with Brilliance copper and I can say that it's gotten a lot of positive response.

<< Canvas Spine close up for more detail