Today, we're showing you how to take the Easy Single-Section book you made last week and decorate the cover. We use watercolors to create a plaid cover in bold pink, blue and green.
Here's what you'll need to do this project:
Supplies
- one single-section book (get complete instructions here)
- a set of water colors
- a broad watercolor brush
- blotting papers
Gather up your supplies, put on some music and let's get started!
Step 1 - Open up the book and place a sheet of blotting paper under the front cover. Pick the first color in your watercolor set and get it nice and wet. Saturate the paint brush for deep paint coverage. Draw lines up and down the book cover, dipping into the paint with every row or two.
Paint lines all the way to the spine. Don't worry if your lines are shaky, it adds to the interesting look of the plaid.
Step 2 - Give you paint brush a good rinse and get ready for the second color.
Step 3 - Using a constrasting color (I'm using a greeny-yellow), paint lines in the opposite direction.
Continue with the lines until you've filled the entire cover.
Step 4 - Choose your final color and fill in the spaces between the greeny-yellow. I used pink and loved how it turned purple when it overlapped the blue lines.
If your paper starts to cockle or warp, place the book under weight until it has dried. Some scrapbooking papers are fairly light-weight. The Making Memories stock that I used for this project is only approximately 60 lb cover so when it gets wet, the fibers don't dry uniformly and this creates the wavy cockling. This article on the property of paper has more info if you're interested.
It's fun to experiment with different color combinations. Have fun using contrasting colors to create unique looks. This technique would also be great for greeting cards and wrapping paper. Enjoy!
(Linked to 30HandmadeDays)
