A Travel Journal

This is a Travel Journal that I have just completed for my painting teacher, Shelley, who leaves for a short holiday in Spain on Thursday, and who has become interested in journaling after seeing the simple journal I kept during a recent visit to my parents in South Africa. First the front:

 

Then the back:

 

The project was relatively simple to construct, the cover being made from a scrap piece of flannel dipped in dilute PVA glue, then cut to size once it had dried.  This was textured with layers of tissue paper, handmade paper and bandage gauze, dried again and then machine embroidered with thick cotton perlé.  At this point I gessoed the whole thing to add stiffness and give me a white surface to decorate, which was done mostly with washes of acrylic paint, a simple stencil border and four squares cut from mount board and sewn down to the front.  The central band is a scrap strip of tapestry canvas with a ribbon couched down by machine.  The cover squares were further embellished with punched paper suns glued down with acrylic medium and a very small amount of beading.  A small amount of pastel colour and a press stud to close completed the cover.

You can just see that I lined the cover in dark green satin to hide all the ends of threads, etc and to allow for the creation of a pencil pocket inside the front cover.  There are only 4 folded sheets of paper inside, but these allow for a title page, a double-page spread for each day of the trip and a page for notes at the back.  The binding was a simple pamphlet stitch job with cotton perlé again.  The pages measure 19 x 26 cm, so the whole thing fits into a plastic page-protector for packing.

Of course, I really want to see what it looks like when it comes BACK, so keep reading and I'll let you know!