Turning Vintage Books into Art Journals with Cristin

Hello everyone!

I'm so excited about today's project because not only does it make an awesome gift for others - it is also a great thing to make for yourself, and since it's my birthday today - that's what I'm going to do!

This weekend I went antique shopping with my family and I found this incredible vintage book! For this particular book, the pages didn't lay flat quite like I need for the perfect art journal - but I knew exactly how to remedy this. 

First, I started by cutting the cover off of the book. Then, I grabbed some watercolor paper and started making signatures. Just fold each paper in half, then stack 4 papers together. This makes 1 signature. I ended up making 5 signatures total, but only used 4 of them. This is a great way to use up the scrap papers in your studio too! Here, I incorporated a few pages that I had already created with Artistcellar stencils and watercolor. 

Once I had all my signatures ready, I used an awl to poke 3 holes on each end, exactly 1 inch apart. I did this with all signatures and then also with the covers, make sure not to get my stack out of order. 

Then, I thread a needle with dental floss -- yes, you heard that right! Dental floss. A little unconventional maybe, but it serves as a waxed thread and it's SUPER STRONG. Added bonus, it smells minty. :)

To finish the book I followed the coptic stitch binding technique which allows for the book to lay totally flat !

You can find a ton of great videos on youtube for the coptic stitch method... it's pretty easy and creates an incredible art journal in the end!

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