What you will need
* 8-10 high back, non-adhesive book pockets
(for 1 book but can dye pockets for more
than one book at a time)
* food coloring
* plastic tub
* rubber gloves
* spray bottle with water
* tray for drying book pockets
* punch
* rubberstamps and ink
* sticker paper (or regular paper and a xyron)
decorative fibers (optional)
Directions:
1. place pockets in tub and run water over them
to wet the book pockets - you want them to be
wet but not soaking. Drain off excess water.
2. squirt food coloring directly from dispenser
onto book pockets. May want to use a spray
bottle to help the coloring move. Add one color
per pocket, spray and layer the next pocket on
top. (Hint: try to use a progression of colors
in the color wheel. I used (in this order)
yellow, red, blue, green) Repeat
3. With rubber gloves on, manipulate the
pockets in the tray by flipping them over a
couple of times. (You can flip them as a group
or flip them individually so the colors blend
and mix) Using a water bottle fitted with a
spray, spray each time you flip the stack of
pockets.
4. Remove pockets from tub and lay in a single
layer on the tray.
5. Let dry. (I sometimes heat my oven to the
lowest setting and put the tray in there-once
the oven has reached the set temperature, I
usually turn the oven off. This is speedier
than air drying).
6. Once the pockets are dry, you may want to
iron them flat.
7. Using a punch, cut "windows" into the
pockets. For my example, I used a 1" square
punch but you can use other shapes. It's
probably best to keep the size of the punch
fairly small.
8. Fold all of the book pockets in half. One
half should contain the pocket and the other
half the "flap".
TO SEE STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS ON
CONSTRUCTING THE BOOK, click HERE.
1. Working on a pair of pockets, one should be
pocket side up and the other pocket side down.
Slide the "pocket side down" pocket into the
"pocket side up" pocket. To see what this looks
like, click here. Repeat until you have all of
the book pockets linked together. If you want
the book to have symmetrical covers, insert
another pocket at the end "pocket side down"
and tuck the flap of the next to the last
pocket.
2. With a pencil, lightly mark around the
window opening. This will provide a guid for
the work that you will adhere to the inside of
the pocket.
3. Stamp a bunch of images onto an 8-1/2 by 11
sheet of sticker paper. Use a variety of
images, small and large and fill the sheet but
DO NOT overlap the images. Use smaller stamps
to fill in the spaces. Use a variety of ink
colors that coordinate with the dyed pockets.
(Or for contrast, could use black and white)
4. Using a slightly larger decorative punch (I
used a larger square punch), turn the punch
upside down so that you can see the composition
of the images to be punched. Punch out 8-10
squares.
5. Disassemble the book, one pocket at a time.
Remove the adhesive backing from the punched
shape. Adhere punched shape to the area
identified by the pencil marking (may want to
adjust the placement so that what shows through
the window is a pleasing arrangement of
images).
6. Optional-using the punched out sections of
the book pockets, stamp with an alphabet set to
spell an 8-9 letter word or series of words.
Adhere these punched and stamped letters to the
"pocket book" - one per section using mounting
squares or adhesive of your choise. (in my
example, I chose the word "fragments")
7. It is not necessary, but if you would like
to further embellish your project, here is one
suggestion. Cut 8 lengths of decorative fiber.
Place one length of fiber in each fold of your
book. Gather all of the fibers to the back
(spine) of your book and tie. You can then
embellish this, if you like with charms or
beads. Voila! It's done.
8. Hints:
a. If you have a xyron then you are not
confined to the colors of the sticker paper
that you can find. You can stamp your images on
any sheet of paper and run through the xyron
machine. Proceed to cut out the images with the
decorative punch as stated above.
b. Acetate, window screen or other kinds of
things can be used in the windows either in
place of or in addition to the punched out
stamped art.
c. Be careful when dying the pockets not to
manipulate too much or the colors may become
muddy. The objective is to move the food
coloring around some.
d. Wear rubber gloves through the dying process
unless you want to have multi-color hands. Once
the pockets are dry, you can handle them
without gloves.
e. There are lots of variations for this
project: try putting quotes in the pockets on
small pieces of cardstock that can be removed
by the recipient (can do this with or without
cutting windows).
f. Use other methods for coloring the paper.
Could also stamp images directly onto the
food-colored pages.