Cover and pages

The past couple of days I've been sharing art journal pages. This photo I took today shows the cover of the journal made from an old book. You can also see the pages & the rings that hold everything together. I created this a dozen years ago! Only one page was added when I discovered the rings were too small, the pages hard to turn. I didn't have any larger at the time and it was put aside. I changed the rings only recently when I decided this could be used for an art journal class I'm taking. How crazy is that, to pick this back up 12 years later?

The book Decorum was published in 1879. I don't remember how I got it, perhaps a gift from an artist friend or a student? I taught Mixed Media art classes... Art journaling, altered books, fabric stamping, book making... and taking an old book apart, reusing the pages or covers was something I came across then.

For this journal I used a cutting tool like a box opener to carefully remove the spine and pages of the book, leaving the front and back cover, along with a stack of old pages. I saved some of book pages to add back into the book. I also cut other papers in the same size like watercolor paper, scrapbook, magazine pages & plain cardstock. Holes were punched for the rings. The beauty of this is I can continue to add different papers and I can also remove them to work on flat! The pages I'm adding to this art journal are for a free online course called "Care December" offered by Everything Art UK.