Iron Craft 2014 Challenge #18--Collaged Book Covers (Project 36)

Front Cover

Back Cover

For this challenge, we were given another Alphabet Challenge--the letter C. I had intended to do a totally different project but then life got in the way. My niece called me in a panic. She is attending the 6th grade in a new private school. She didn't realize that she needed to provide her own book covers for her textbooks. She didn't want to make the brown paper bag book covers that her mother and I grew up with. Nooooooo! She NEEDED to have custom Uncle Russ book covers.

I reached out to my Face Book friends to see what the tastes of a 6th grader were. I didn't know if they are into sparkle and glitter or something else. I then took my supplies to my niece's apartment and we got busy. Rather than glitter and sparkle, she settled on "artistic" and "artsy."

So C is for collage and cutouts.

Step One: Prepare the paper. We chose a plum Canson paper. It is a little thicker than craft paper bags so I felt that it should be able to withstand the semester. I then airbrushed the paper in five different colors.

In the process, I also airbrushed some collage pieces (here are pages from a Statistical Abstract book and pages from an A&F catalog.).

Step Two: Mount the pieces to the pre-folded book cover. I dry fit the book cover so I could see where the flat sides would be (and to get a sense of dimension). The pages were hand torn to size and the deckled edges were then colored with a Sharpie to coordinate with the paper and paint.

Working pallette

Cover with all sides folded down

Step Three: Mount the cut outs onto the collaged sheets. For this process, I placed the textbook inside the cover so I could center the final cutout.

Front Cover (without cutout)

Back Cover (without cutout)

My niece chose Victorian silhouettes for her book covers. These were cutouts that I had previously used for an Opening Night card. Once I enlarged the design, we were ready to mount them to the collaged pages.