the art of making a journal

I recently had the pleasure, and good fortune, of taking a class with artist, Tracy V. Moore.  Check out his blog here.

To read about another class he held recently in making journals, look here.  You will see some lovely photos of wonderful journals.

This is the journal I made in the workshop.

We made our own journals out of copper and leather.  I had no experience in book binding at all before this class.  I think I speak for all of us who took the class when I say we had a ton of fun.  We did not want the class to end.

This is my talented friend, Nicola.  I met her in the workshop!  A very fun thing about attending workshops is getting to meet some amazing artists.

This is the cool journal that Nicola made in class.  She used flattened pennies she had been collecting.   They made a really great embellishment.  I love the red thread with black leather.

We met in Tracy's awesome studio/workshop, where he taught us how to create a cool journal.  I'd seen many of his handmade journals in the past at ArtFest and other art retreats.  I knew, from having seen those, that he has some mad skills.  In addition to that, he's a great teacher and fun to hang out with!  He is also a wonderful journal artist.

I used a small metal piece, which I had made years ago in a jewelry/silversmithing class, as an embellishment on the journal.  It is a silver and copper flower.  

Tracy taught us how to make our own rivets to attach whatever we wanted to use as an embellishment.

Tracy has a bunch of fabulous power tools that were fun to try out too.  For example, he has a drill press, a power sander, and a power buffer, in addition to a lot of other wonderful stuff. 

I hammered the copper with a variety of hammers to create texture.  Then I applied some sapphire colored rub n' buff to add color to the recessed areas I had created with the hammering.  After letting the rub n' buff sit for a few minutes, I buffed it with the power buffer.  Then I buffed it some more with Scotch-Brite.  

We filled the book with pages made of Fabriano hot press watercolor paper.  It is going to be a lot of fun making art journal pages in this journal.

Thanks for stopping by!