Tando Creative: Tando Straight edged arch bound in a book by Art Angel

Todays project is a little bit different. I have in my stash a set of the wonderful Tando Straight Edge Arch substrates and thought they would make a lovely set of book covers….. not how they are usually used maybe but thats what i love about the versatility of greyboard!

This project is perfect for using up all the left over scraps of rice papers that otherwise would head for the bin. I have used Stamperia scraps left over from a Christmas project, but this book does not shout Christmas at all.

I randomly base coated my back board, arch and smaller arch insert, and an additional mdf heart with decortart oatmeal and raw umber and adhered my rice paper scraps to all four pieces. When dry i used heavy gel medium through Andy Skinners distressed digits stencil on three areas of each element and left to dry.

Whilst waiting for the pieces to dry, i carefully used the largest solid arch as a template to draw round by placing one flat side edge along the creased edge of some folded cotton rag paper sheets and cut just within the line drawn to create my pages, paying particular attention to not cut too far down the folded crease. You can make as many or as few pages as you wish.

When my boards were dry i used a punch to evenly pierce five holes along the lower half of one straight edge. Laid this on top of the open arch and poked through holes made with a pokey tool, to mark the positioning required for that piece and then made holes in the relevant places.

I added some texture paste coloured with a bit of turquoise acrylic and inked my edges with archival ink on a blending tool, when all edges were done i lightly blended over the set gel medium and dry brushed with interference gold to bring out more texture. I finally added small elements of red to bringing out tiny red elements in the rice papers

I used a coptic stitch to bind the pages into the two covers and adhered the back page to the open arch so that i had a backed recess to mount my mdf heart.

I used one final piece of creased cotton rag to create a smaller one page signature to go under my front arch insert as i wanted this as a feature on my front cover. I used the punch to create three binding holes and coptic stitched the single page to the small arch.

I adhered the back side of this page to the front book cover, pierced another hole opposite the middle binding holefor my closure and a final hole in the main cover so that i can thread waxed string through. This is the most simple closure ever, waxed thread through the hole , tape the end in place with red liner tape so it has a strong hold, glue all around edges and centre of greyboard and adhere to first page, do the same on both front covers, this way you conceal your workings and are left with two dangling strands that you can now tie in a bow.

Ive added one bead at the spine, will add coordinating beads on the ends of closure strands when i find some the right colour and a key painted turquoise and red, i may add most embellishment to the front but don’t want it too bulky as the point of a coptic stitched book is that it will lay very flat when open for working in

I’d love to see yours if you make one x

Products used

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/ARCHSELRG.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/CLDADMFA37-1.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/CLDADMFA09-1.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/CLDADMM33-4O.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/ANDY11-K.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/CLDADMM23.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/ARCHBLKSM.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/CLDADMFA100.html

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/CLDADMFA18-1.html

Rice paper scraps