Gold Japanese Book

gold-japanese-book-cover.jpggold-japanese-book-side.jpggold-japanese-book-back.jpgFor this book cover I started by gessoing over cotton cloth.  Then I impressed in the wet gesso with some stamps. There’s a crysanthemum, a cherry branch, and a geisha, as well as something that looks like a stylized five pointed blossom.  When the gesso dried, I painted over it with greenish and gold metallic acrylic. I rubbed some of the paint off to emphasize the texture.

The fimo embellishments were ones I made several months ago.  I rolled out a thin slab of translucent fimo, then pressed stamps into it.  After that I cut wedges and a center circle by using an apple corer.  After they were baked, I painted them gold.  The effect was rather more subtle than I liked, so I emphasized them with the maple leaf paper. 

The paper is tough (expensive) multi-print washi that I bought in Japan. I used some more for the endpapers, and for the strip on the back cover.  The gold stamp on the spine was one that was issued while I was in Japan as part of their “International Letter-Writing Week”.  I wrote a lot of letters (hundreds and hundreds) in the two years I was there, so I came to be very familiar with every stamp in the 130 yen denomination.

2 comments

  1. SO beautiful Thank you for sharing your talent and describing your fabulous techniques. :0)

    • Kathy on February 27, 2016 at 10:57 pm

    Wow, I had no idea gesso could be used over fabric even though it is used on canvas, which is of course fabric. It is great of you to share your crafting ideas & I think your book cover is very cool, using an interesting variety of products & techniques that makes it very personalised to remind you of your time in Japan. I am from Australia & I visited Japan several times while I lived in Canada for 4 years. I collected small items including postage stamps during that time & I feel so inspired by your book that I feel I would like to make a memory book myself in a similar manner.

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