The Ultimate Art Book

DJ Pettitt

Immerse yourself in a 3-day class filled with innovative techniques and inspiration! DJ will share her process, as well as her favorite materials and methods as she guides you in creating a fabulous book that you’ll treasure for years to come. Beginning with the cover, you’ll incorporate a personal photo (or one of DJ’s) as the focal point—you’ll then apply paint and wax, using a few simple and fun techniques, to create a truly unique cover.

Creating the pages comes next, where the sky’s the limit! She’ll share with you a number of methods that she uses to enhance her book pages, including: preparing backgrounds with various painting techniques; applying textural mediums; combining collage elements; altering photos in unique ways; using fabric scraps and ephemera in your composition; creating unique embellishments; incorporating machine and/or hand-stitching, and much more.

You may wish to bring personal items to create a memory journal, travel journal, etc., or you may want to simply create a book that stands alone as a work of art—it’s completely up to you! Once the pages are created, you’ll complete your book construction using a simple binding and a beautiful embellished spine.

No drawing or painting skills required—all you need to bring is your enthusiasm!

Supply List

Click here for a printable supply list.

Canvas panels in the size you would like your book http://www.dickblick.com/products/blick-canvas-panels/. These are the inexpensive boards, not stretched canvas. Sample book will have four, 6X8 panels, but you could use two if you would like to finish your book faster.
Small, Heavy Gel Medium in matte, any brand. I use Liquitex Matte Gel, Super Heavy: http://www.dickblick.com/products/liquitex-acrylic-mediums/
Small, Matte Medium, any brand. I use Liquitex: http://www.dickblick.com/products/liquitex-gloss-and-matte-mediums/
Small, Student grade White Gesso - any brand. Student grade gesso is a bit translucent. See student grade here: http://www.dickblick.com/gesso/priming/#acrylicgessos
Small, Liquitex Super Heavy White Gesso, or other heavy, opaque gesso. http://www.dickblick.com/products/liquitex-acrylic-gessos/
Inexpensive brushes. I like a 1/4" and 1/2" flat brush, and a #6 round brush, or close to it. You will also need a utility brush about 1" wide, or any inexpensive 1" flat brush to paint the pages and use with Matte Medium.
Black China Marker (grease pencil) available at office supply stores, art supply stores, and online.
Several soft or medium body acrylic paints (not the heavy-body tube paint). Include your favorite colors plus a golden brown and black. Any brand will work. I use Golden Fluid, craft paint, Claudine Helmuth Studio paints, and Liquitex Soft Body paint.
Fabric scraps for creating the signature wraps, linings inside the covers, and the spine. Include 2, 6" X 9" pieces of muslin or similar fabric to use as a base to piece linings for the inside covers. Vintage quilt top pieces (unfinished with no padding), velvet, ribbon, lace and trims, and small scraps of recycled clothing are a few ideas.
18 strips of fabric for page hinges (bring double if they are really thin or if you would like both sides of the page covered) about 2" or 3" wide and about 8" long. These strips of fabric will be glued or sewn to the book pages. It can be any fabric, but needs to be flexible enough to easily fold.
Images in color and/or black and white in any size that will fit on the canvas panels. These can be printed on matte paper using a laser printer, or an inkjet printer that uses non-smearing pigment ink (such as Epson Ultra Chrome K3), or toner copies from any print shop. No high gloss paper. Bring 2 copies of each image. You can also piece more than one image per canvas.
Buttons or beads for binding a 4-signature book. These can be any size and don’t have to all be the same size. If they are large (up to 1" or so), you will need approximately 8-12; if they are small (around1/4" in diameter) you will need 18-24 (2-hole or shank buttons work best). Vintage shoe buttons are also wonderful used on book spines. Beads and buttons should have a large enough hole to accommodate a 1mm needle.
Stonehenge paper for book pages. We will be creating a 4-signature book (signatures are groups of pages), so you will need 48 pieces torn or cut the same height, and a bit narrower than the size of the canvas panels. Stonehenge is available at most art supply stores, and online here: http://www.dickblick.com/products/stonehenge-paper/.
Small bottle Tacky Glue
Small glue stick
Flat palette—can be a palette paper pad or a piece of cardboard covered with foil
3" doll sculpture needle or similar book binding needle that will go through the holes in your buttons/beads
Japanese Screw Punch, with a 1/16" tip (2.5mm) and a small cutting mat to lay signatures on as you punch holes
Palette knife—this must be offset. I use an Ateco offset cake knife # 1385. Overall length is 8 1/4". Trowel shaped palette knives will work, but they need to be a similar size to the cake knife

General supplies: scissors, pencil, ruler, paper towels, paint rag, water container

Optional

Small iron without steam holes for spreading wax. I’ll have a few to share.
A few small, collage elements to add to the covers such as thin paper, tissue, old letters, phone book page, etc.
Sewing machine and thread. There will be at a couple of machines for sharing.

Kit fee of $10 (payable directly to instructor on day of class) includes: color handout, several images, beeswax, metallic "dust," and waxed linen.