3 January 2008
Faux Leather Scroll Pendants
Posted by Lady Artisan under: General Bookbinding .
Well, I’ve just come off of a sculpting binge and I’m worse about updating my sculpting blog than this one so, if you’re into sculpting, check my Etsy shop for my latest offerings there or check my Flickr page for what’s posted there (as of this writing, I haven’t added any of my sculpture photos there).
Since you’re probably here because you like bookbinding, I’ll just get right to the “book” parts. I made a couple of faux leather scroll pendants (yep, they’re in my Etsy shop, also).
Figured I’d share the quick how-to on them. Yes, these covers are made from polymer clay. I used a custom blend of Premo copper and Sculpey Bake and Bend brown (which I also custom mixed from a couple of the primaries). To be honest, it’s been so long since I’ve made any faux leather, that I don’t really remember my recipes. I think I just mixed quantities of red and green with smidges of yellow and/or blue until I had a brown that I liked. Once I had the brown color I liked in Bake and Bend (B&B), I mixed about 50/50 copper with the B&B until it was well-blended.
Next step was to get the embossed leather look. I started by making a sheet of the clay (I used my pasta machine) on a medium setting making a relatively thin sheet of clay. I used a homemade texture sheet (from an embossed jewelry box) for one pendant and a commercial texture sheet for the other. The homemade texture was made with a two-part silicone mold so it didn’t need a release on it but it also was too thick to go through the pasta machine so I had to hand-press it. Fortunately, the pendants were pretty small, so I didn’t have to try and match seams because the mold is pretty small. For the commercial sheet, I dusted it with baby powder, laid the sheet of clay on it and ran them together through the pasta machine at a thicker setting (the widest or second widest). I left the edges on one ragged and trimmed the other netly and then cured them all for 30 minutes at 275.
Paper time. The paper was scraps of Arches Text Wove, left from making some bigger books. I just tore it to size–literally measured it against the polymer clay sheets to get the right lengths. If you’re planning on trying this out, be sure to test your lengths of paper by rolling the scroll up so that you don’t have a bunch of paper sticking out the end of the scroll when it’s rolled (looks tacky that way). The widths were already perfect (yeah, I keep all my scraps, big and little, including the little bits and pieces for adding to pulp when I’m making paper–which happens very infrequently, I might add). I think I put about 5 or 6 sheets in each one. I stacked the sheets with the cover (slightly offset at the top) and used a needle tool to make holes in the paper and cover together so they’d match up. Two holes at the top so I could just tie the paper to the book using linen cord (unwaxed, although I’ve used waxed also and it works fine). You basically just run each end of the thread through one hole and then tie a knot.
Closure–I just made a single hole at the opposite end of the “binding” with a needled tool. I used 1mm leather cord for these two scrolls although I’ve also used waxed linen cord. I’m not sure that the unwaxed linen will work as well because it’s not as smooth (might get fuzzy with use), but I haven’t tried it so it might be just fine. I folded the cord in half and slipped it through the hole and
then tied a knot, so that I had two ends on the oustide of the cover. I added a small gold jumpring and simply tied it on. The jumpring is for hanging from a cord since it is a pendant. I tied an extra knot to secure the jumpring. That’s it for the closure. To close the scroll, simply roll up as tightly as you can and wrap the cord ends around and then tie a bow (I try to make it so that the bow is opposite the edge of the scroll).
