beauteous tyvek

tutorial for...

Most Beauteous Junk Journal Ever

This most beauteous Junk Journal Ever is not my original idea.  Not at all.

My talented and wonderful and mysterious friend Dianna made one and mailed it to me.

I loved it so much that I decided all of you guys needed one too.

You can stalk Dianna’s online presence by searching for designsbydllr on  google (wait! look!  I stalked heartily and found her photo stream  WOW
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32920027@N07/ )

When you find her, thank her for this tutorial, not me.  I would have never thought to have made a journal like this if she hadn’t sent it to me.

You’re going to be over the top about this journal because it’s not something you’ll worry about messing up.

You’ll see what I mean when you see it.

Now, sometimes my instructions seem clear as clear stuff to  me, but are really very vague.   If something seems confusing, just ask me to clear it up.  I’m easy to stalk on the internet as well, and you are welcome to ask me any questions that come up.

xxa

**ah.  now this was meant to be a PDF that you can download, but i cannot find a way to share a downloadable file on my blog.  You can either grab the PDF from flutterbye on the art videos and tutorials page, or you can email me (amy@amymcdonald.net)  and i will send you the PDF as an email attachment**






Supplies

2 large tyvek envelopes (go where your conscience leads you with this – personally I consider them a gift from the post office)

Inks/acrylic craft paints to decorate the envelopes

Polymer medium (but I bet you could use glazing medium if that’s what you already have)

Old newspapers (or new ones.  it’s sort of stupid that I wrote old ones)

Masking tape

embroidery floss and wax or waxed floss or just some string to bind it with.  whatever.

YES paste

optional but awesome:

sewing machine to crazy stitch the pages

buttons and embellishy shit

print out of your art work or thrift store prints  (whateves)




Ready?  go.

Here are the envelopes for the cover.  They are made out of tyvek, which is this great mysterious stuff that is waterproofish.  Plus, you can’t tear it.  Well, maybe you can, but I can’t.

The post office in the united states provides these for free for all of your shipping and crafting needs.  I will find out where you can get this stuff for free overseas and post it when I finally figure it out.

Cut the envelope open and just smoosh your alcohol inks all around on it.  Let it dry for a million years.

Or you can use plain old acrylic craft paints.  No biggie.

Here is a photo of the flip side of the envelope after decorating it with inks.  Obviously, this side is ugly and won’t be visible.

Okay, so grab those newspapers and nest two fold outs together.

Use  masking tape and tape up the edges and the center crease.  You want to tape up the center crease because that’s where you’ll bind it. You don’t want your binding to rip, right?

Here I used my sewing machine to crazy stitch the pages.  Remember I have 2 nested together and frankly crazy stitching is a hell of a lot easier than gluing and waiting.

So I made like 5 or 6 of these and set them aside.

Back to the tyvek now, because it’s dry I’m sure.
Put a coat of polymer medium on there.  Like, don’t be stingy.
It makes the whole thing plastickyish so that you won’t feel anal about messing it up.  Plasticky stuff wipes clean easily.  Who the hell wants to work in a journal they are too afraid to make a mess in?  not me.

Next grab both of your decorated tyvek sheets.  Place the ugly not decorated sides of each together.

Choose one (the prettier one) to be the Outside cover.

use YES (super dry and awesome glue) to glue the wrong (ugly undecorated) sides of both envelopes together.

Fold the edges of the outside envelope down around the inside one and glue that down too.  See why you need the YES stuff?  It holds really fast so you aren’t standing there all day holding it down.

If you want artwork on the front cover you can grab a painting from a thrift store like this one below

Or you can print out some of your own artwork and cover it Very Generously with polymer medium.

Then just use some more paste to glue it to the front cover.

Let this dry for AGES before sewing it.
Your sewing machine will not be happy with only slightly dry tyvek journal covers.

Neither will your manslave when he helps your disassemble the metal plate and gears in your sewing machine to get all of that crap off of there.

Just wait a few hours.
Or overnight.

overnight is probably best.

But then! when your waiting is over – stitch around the edges and do a bit of crazy stitching on the cover art.

The inks and stuff were still coming off on my hands, so I put more polymer medium on there after sewing it.  You might not need to.  I just like polymer medium.

Next, nest your folded newspaper things (that you prepared with masking tape and crazy stitching) into your now totally waterproof and awesome cover.

wax your floss at this time if you need to.  it pisses me off when mine breaks, but you might be more gentle with stuff like that than I am and not need wax.

Grab a big needle and run the floss through it.

I don’t know the names for book binding stitches, and I don’t know how to do any of them.  I looked at the binding on dianna’s journal and just sort of tried to stitch mine like that.

I’m thinking it’s more of a visual thing, so I hope the pictures convey how I did the sewing.

if i have been vague, just ask me questions and i'll try to answer them.

if you'd like the PDF version, feel free to email me and i'll send it to you via an email attachment.

There's a live class scheduled for tuesday morning at 9am CST (see sidebar for timezones and a world clock and all of that..)

the class will be HERE

❤ ❤ ❤