Hand Bound Encaustic Journal

My husband and I were on a weekend trip in Asheville, NC, a few years ago and spent quite a bit of time walking through the local art galleries and shops.  There were so many amazing pieces that inspired me after that trip, but the piece that stuck with me the most was a hand made encaustic journal.

The idea fascinated me.  I had been doing encaustic work for a year or so at that point, and something like this had never even entered my mind.  I decided right then that I would try it for myself one day.

Well, it took me a while to finally feel confident enough to do it, partly because I needed to practice my bookbinding skills and partly because I could never find pieces of wood that were the right size, and I didn’t trust Home Depot to cut the right sizes for me.

So when I found these identical wood pieces at Michael’s that were about the size of a large envelope, I recognized instantly that they were a solution to my encaustic journal problem, and I could bring this awesome project from the nearly forgotten realms in my mind and out into the real world.

I had to bind the book first.  I had stained these pages for a different project that evolved into something else, and so I decided to use these walnut ink stained pages here, and cut them down to the right size.  I used four sheets for each signature.  After drilling little holes in the covers (making sure each one matched the other), I poked holes through each signature where the cover holes would meet them.

Now, it’s time for the stitches.  I used a coptic stitch to bind the pages to the covers.  There are a lot of tutorials for this stitch online, but I used this one.  It’s quite thorough and will take you through all the steps.

Once I finish the binding, it was time to work on the cover.  I didn’t have a clear idea of what to do, so I started by painting it with clear wax.  As I was working, I kept thinking of the night sky, and how pretty it would look with some dark colors and some stars.

So I rubbed oil pastels into the surface of the wax, blending the colors to create a blended look.  Once the colors were added, I fused the surface very gently, which made the surface quite shiny and bright.  I had to let each side dry overnight because the oils were still a bit wet and easily smudged, even after the wax cooled.

The day after, I splattered some white india ink onto the surface to mimic the look of stars.

So, what do you think?  I think my encaustic journal experiment was a success.  I’ll need to practice a few more times to really iron out some of the issues I had as I created it, but it was such a fun project with a great final result!