Beadlust

Kathy's Beaded Book ~

This happy student is Kathy Malkasian, director of the Valley Ridge Art Studio (see previous post). Despite having to take care of my teaching needs, feeding the whole class fancy lunch every day and hosting me in the evenings, Kathy still managed to finish her book in great style!

Here you can see two parts of the process... painting and book binding. Each of us also completed a small piece of improvisational bead embroidery to inset into the covers of our books.



Before completing the binding, I took a picture of the 5 or 6 signatures (sections of papers) and the cover of each student's book. Kathy's painted papers are rich, almost leather like, with many layers of acrylic paint, glazed to heighten the subtle quality. Each signature cover encloses 5 folded blank sheets with torn edges.

The resulting book is classy, indeed! I hope Kathy will enjoy journaling in her lovely book.

Tip ~ A little trick we used on Kathy's book may be useful to some of you. She did her bead embroidery on a natural muslin. Before insetting into her book, she temporarily placed it in position on the cover and noticed that the very light colored fabric showed around the edges. The high contrast was noticeable and not attractive. Here's the trick! We took a marking pen, permanent bronze, and colored the fabric next to the beadwork. After that, it virtually disappeared because it blended with the painted colors of the cover paper. I have also used acrylic paint, slightly watered down, to accomplish this same magic trick.