A rusty japanese stab book

When I made my first japanes stab book for a swap, my husband liked it so much that he wanted me to make one for him. So I promised him to make one.

I started working on the book last week when I showed you the covers in my WOYWW post. I finished the book last monday.

As he likes steampunk stuff, I made it rusty and old looking. He's quite pleased with his notebook.

I did take some progress shots, but not very much. So I won't be able to show you exactly what I did to get this look, but I will try and talk through all the steps.

I started out with cardboard covers and stuck some metal foil tape to them. I then embossed those with the Rived Metal folder from the Sizzix Texture Fades Diamond Plate & Rived Metal Set. I then covered them with black acrylic paint and wiped most of it away. Leaving me with this.

I love this look, but as I was going for a more weathered steamy look, I figured I would take it a step further and try to go for a rusty look.

I first treated the plates with some turkoise paint after wich I went back in with a copper paint. This gave me the greenish weathered look.

It still wasn't weathered enough for me, so I mixed some black sandy particles with a matt medium and applied it to the covers, mainly focussing on the edges and bottom front side of the covers. I then went over it with burnt umber, black and orange

On the inside covers I did the same paints, but skipped the sandy particles, as I wanted those to be smooth. The inside cover in the above picture has not had the final treatment yet.

As a final painting step I covered the paint with some matt varnish to protect it somewhat from wear and tear.

I bound the book with the same japanese stab binding technique I used for my previous japanese stab book. Here you can also find a video with me struggling with the japanese stab binding. This time it went much easier, practice does make things better =).

Decorated it with a Tim Holtz Ornate book plate and corners. The book plate was treated with alcohol inks (mushroom and eggplant) after which I dabbed some copper acrylic paint onto it to make it look rusty.

I found an Abraham Lincoln picture in my 8"-8" collage mini stash paperpad. cut it out and stuck it behind the book plate with diamond glaze on top.

The corners were also dabbed with the copper paint.

The papers inside the book are a collection of tea dyed papers, brown papers and plain white papers. All cut to size and randomly stacked.

Well maybe not so randomly, because I made 9 stacks and build each stack with  9 different papers, so that no adjacent papers are the same.

I glued an envelope to the front, so he can keep some stuff in there, stamped on it and called it a day. 

I had difficulty taking pictures of the book, because inside it was too dark and outside there was to much glare. I do have some pictures that were taken outside.

Here it is next to the rusty "fireplace" we have outside, without sun, so that was alright, but when the sun came out...

I think it does look like a rusty oiled old door...

So that's it, my rusty notebook. Or at least I gave it a shot =).

I think maybe next time I will just skip the step with the metal foil, because after all those layers of paint, I really don't see the point of the metal foil anymore. It does peek through here and there, so maybe it does add to the overall look. 

Thank you all for watching and I wish you a beautiful day.

Linking this to:

• Sandee & Alemlie's steampunk challenge blog: It's all about "RUST"
• Try it on Tuesday: Show us your metal