book pages Archives - Mixed Media Art

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This article was written by Melanie Statnick

We all have paper towel rolls and bath room tissue rolls. It’s recyclable and reusing able and some save it for all sorts of things. Something I have learned to do with it is make books and or note pads. These ideas can be found on Pinterest. There are many different ways to make and design these and I encourage you to find them and come up with something new and share your ideas in the comments. You can get your children involved also. They are fun and easy.

Supplies:

Paper roll

Craft paper or Scrap book

Gel medium/Mod Podge

Hole Punch

Binder Rings or Craft wire

Images, letters, word art

Micron or Copic Pens

Process for Creating your Mini Book

Begin by flattening out the paper roll. Here I used bathroom tissue, you can use a paper towel roll and cut it in half. Glue the inside of both rolls to create your front and back cover and let dry.

Next you want to take a ruler and measure approximately were you want to your holes and use the hole punch to punch through. Once you have them punched measure and cut your craft paper the same size as your roll covers and punch holes in each to match your covers.

When you have your papers cut use four and glue them to your covers front and back. The excess will be your pages. You can place images and word art on these as you like. Design the covers the same way.

When you are finished with your pages use your binder rings to hold the book together. On the blank side of the pages you can draw in your own pictures and create your phrases. Happy Creating.

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Melanie Statnick is a Canadian Mixed Media & Collage Artist out of North Carolina. Melanie creates art daily from her private studio. Her style is fun, whimsy and eclectic. Melanie is also an Art Instructor for local venues and community colleges for students of all ages.

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My Favourite Materials – Part 2 Text Ephemera

It’s no secret that at MMA we support everyone that has an inner need to create, using materials that we have at hand, around the home as much as possible, or are fairly cheap and easy to buy, as compared to corporate lines of specialty papers and embellishments where you need to buy something from the entire range as the colours don’t match with anything else. It is very frustrating.

This short series of articles will highlight some of my favourite materials.

Part 2 – Text Ephemera
My favourite method of creating visually textured backgrounds is to use various text pages that come from old books, magazines, conference proceedings, knitting patterns, dressmaking patterns. While this doesn’t seem like likely mixed media arts material, once you start really looking at them, you will see a huge variety of different paper textures, fonts, type sizes.

Together they do create a form of art in themselves. All of these put together make a great background, as your eyes search out meaning in the words and letters. You may even find sketches or diagrams in these materials that also add to the background layering. Start with cheap materials and never use a book of value.

Using old books creates many many pages. The covers can then be used as substrates for future projects, or even as covers for altered books.

Also use as papermache to hold the box or shrine together, providing strength and interest at the same time. Also use the words to add meaning, inference and a story to our mixed media work.