Mingle excitement and inspiration and you'll get a fabulous gothic arch book! When I discovered the release of wonderful new Green Pepper Press rubber stamp sheets in September 2006, I couldn't resist but post about it on my blog. My friends Pilar Pollock and Tina Shoaga responded quickly sharing the same excitement. I spontaneously suggested an exchange using our new rubber stamps, after all that's what we bought them for! We thought a book project would be fun. Several weeks later I noticed that Audrey Hernandez also shared the same excitement about the stamps so she joined our small exchange. We all loved a gothic book in Beryl Taylor's book "Mixed Media Explorations" and finally agreed on using this as a book shape. I made a pattern from a standard A6 postcard and bearing in mind the binding on the left side. [Sidenote - We only discovered afterwards that the pattern prints out slightly larger with US letterstyle format instead of DinA4 format.] In order to fill the book with a few more pages, I made some doubles of my some of my own pages plus a few more for myself. I was also lucky to receive 2 further "guest" pages from blogging friends Patti Gramza and Sanja Schabel. At first I wanted to bind the pages within an altered book cover, but then preferred to simply keep the gothic arch shape and opted for an open spine coptic binding. Instead of using signatures, I punched 3 holes into the left side and used these for sewing. As decoration and binding reinforcement I added beads to the spine, stitching and attaching 3 book pages per bead row. My book has 10 pages and I managed to even use one bead row for 4 pages. What a fun project! Feel free to print the template and create your own gothic arch book by yourself or even better with some friends ...


Belinda Schneider
Belinda Schneider
Belinda Schneider
Belinda Schneider
Belinda Schneider
Belinda Schneider
Belinda Schneider
Belinda Schneider   Silentium
Patti Gramza
Sanja Schabel
Tips:
- Use metal jump rings or a coil binder for a quick book binding.
- Use scrapbook papers for quick backgrounds.
- Add eyelets for further hole reinforcement and protection from tearing.
Tina Shoaga
Audrey Hernandez for Tina
Audrey Hernandez  for Tina
Tina Shoaga
Audrey Hernandez
Tina Shoaga
Tina Shoaga
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Analytics
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock
Pilar Pollock