Nature themed paperbag book

I have been taking part in an international collaborative paperbag book, on the theme of 'Nature'. Each player made 2 sets of 12 pages, and mailed them to the hostess, who swapped them out, and sent each player some brown paper bags to help us turn the assorted pages into books.

I coloured the edges of my paper bags with Starburst Stains.


I bound the bags with the open ends alternating, and the binding being about 3/4 inch from the stubby end of the bag - leaving the stubby end as a 'half' page, as seen above. The binding was very simple, I just made 2 holes, and threaded the thread between the holes and around the ends, then tied the threads together and trimmed the ends off. I made 5 pages from decorated folded card to attach to the stubs, and added Nature themed quotations to those pages.

I stuck half my pages back to back with tabs in between, to go into the 'pockets' created by the paper bags, and stuck the remainder on the bare pages. I added covers made from painted & collaged canvas, and added a little bronze German Scrap trim. Here's a picture of the spine of the book, showing the binding thread.

I made 3 bundles of fibres in the colours of the covers, and threaded them through the binding threads, and tied them together in a half knot. This picture shows the cover with 2 bundles added. They cover the binding thread nicely!


I added some letters to the cover, along with a lovely little rusty lizard who came home with me from last year's trip to Arizona. I'm really glad I've managed to bind everybody's gorgeous pages into a book which looks nice - I did wonder if I'd end up with another UFO at the back of the bookshelf....


All I have to do now is bind last year's Meander pages, and the Angel chunky book pages from the year before...