Hahnemühle's Travel Booklet

 

I am excited to begin work today in a new-to-me book from Hahnemühle! The Travel Booklet comes in a set of two, so you get twice the bang for your buck. Good stuff. Each book has twenty sheets, or forty work surfaces. I have an exciting project in the works for this book but first I want to show you how I made this cover. 

Here you can see what the cover looks like when you get your book. Craft color. You can leave it that way or you can jazz it up some. I've had other similar books and I've drawn on the covers, changing it into a tangled work of art. For this one I wanted to try something different.  I knew it was going to get messy - cause trust me, when doesn't it? - so I put a piece of card stock under each side of the cover to protect the inside pages. And I worked on top of a craft mat to protect my desk. 

Using my color shaper tool I spread a layer of Dina Wakley's Clear Gesso over the entire cover. Do you see all those crazy lines? I should have worked harder at smoothing them out. Or, I can just be happy with the added texture to my project. Yep, that's what I'm going with. Hahahaa!

For color I used Dylusions Acrylic Paints. And my finger. Rocket science painting 101 going on right here. Hahahahaha!

And I just kept adding colors I like. A little swipe of color here, a little swipe there. Working towards covering the entire surface. And praying this works. 

Just adding more color. Brightening up the dark areas. 

And a little more blue. At this point I felt like I had enough color. Hahahaha! What a mess! Hahahahaha! But I had a plan in mind. Fingers crossed, don't you know. 

Here are my supplies for moving forward. A stencil I love, white acrylic paint - el cheapo brand - and a makeup sponge for dabbing. 

I put a couple new card stocks underneath those covers to protect my underlying pages. My stencil wasn't quite big enough to cover both sides of the cover at once, so I worked from left to right. 

I used the makeup sponge to pick up the white acrylic from my trash plate and just pounced the color over the stencil. What I realized after the fact is I was not holding my stencil in the right place. I was holding it towards the bottom which allowed the stencil to move up and down when I pounced paint, so I got white paint in places I didn't want it. I should have been holding the stencil in place close to the area I was adding paint to. 

Here it is after I covered both the front and back of my travel booklet. I love it! Is it perfect? No. But I love it anyway! Not finished yet, though. 

I used some Pebeo Iridescent gold to add around the edges. A little bling, a little shine. And I let it all dry. 

Here is the front. I like the way the colors ghost behind the white areas. 

And the back. This is the side where I didn't hold my stencil right. I should have been holding it in place with my hand closer to the area where I was adding the white color. But I am ok with the way it turned out. I think it's great. 

The last step was to seal the entire cover with some DecoArt Americana Acrylic Sealer. Sprayed outdoors in the freezing cold because . . . chemicals. Whoa! This stuff is strong but it works. I love this Travel Booklet so far. As I move to the inside and start working there I will tell you more about the book itself. Right now I am just going to admire the outside for a few minutes before I move to the inside. 

Travel Booklets can be purchased as a two pack set by clicking here.