 for a while to take apart some of my old canvases from when I first started painting canvases that are really bad. I can only paint over so many of them and after that I have to do something else with them. So here you see me taking one of those said canvases using a box cutter to release it from its stretcher frame and cut it off of the frame. That's right, we're removing the fabric from the frame. I know it's like a big art no-no or something. I decided to cut it off rather than remove the staples because well it was easier and faster. Then I'm going to just eyeball it and cut this canvas into strips, actually rip it into strips to be honest. I want to use it to make a little journal cover. Now the thinking behind this little journal is I really like working on little art journals. There's a lot of different artists out there right now doing many art journals including Ray Misigman and I really love the idea of little small mole skin type journals with the elastic closure only with kind of better paper. So I cut the old canvas into a small enough piece of that I want to work with for the cover you see here with actually another piece of fabric that I initially intend on being the inside cover. I used one of my own stencils from my collection that you can find in my Etsy shop, the links in the description, check out the description. Actually a couple of stencils from that line to start painting over both pieces of canvas and I am really loving where it's going. I'm just making marks. I am not doing this with any plan and I am loving where it's going. You can see from the piece of the old canvas from the stretcher frame that I left the collage bits on there. There's a clock face glued down. I left that on there and it really made an interesting cover when all was said and done. So I'm just painting it. Different kinds of distressed paint, Adirondack paint, Americanic craft paint, nothing fancy and nothing expensive. I also have the black is black gesso. I have an old bottle of black gesso that if I don't use it up it's going to go bad and probably dry into our block. So I thought maybe I should use it up. So in between each layer of paint I let things dry a bit or dry them with a heat gun. Then I go in with pencils, markers. These are China markers. I have both a black one and a white one and I make some marks on the canvas. Then I come in with some collage bits, some sheet music, some tissue paper, some deli paper, some newsprint paper that I was playing with one of my new stencils on and I collage some of that down over the parts that I painted. I just keep adding layers on top of layers until I get something that I really love. I'm using indigo blues, slap it on to glue everything down. I really love that glue. It dries quickly, it's easy to use, sticks everything down. After the collage layer of course I come back with more paint and I add more marks because you know I'm not done. Then I come in with some of my silicone hot pads and make more marks because I'm not done. And just keep doing that until you really love what you're doing. And this is just the beginning. So then I decide to get my little sewing machine out and I sew all the way around the edges with some black thread of each piece of canvas and just to give it sort of an interesting mixed media edge, I do decide in a minute you'll see me pulling out and you can see some of it here on the table, random bits of fabric lace trims and I do also sew those to the cover. Now when you're sewing on these mixed media pieces don't use your fancy expensive machine. Use a cheap little inexpensive machine, go slow, use a big stitch length and use a big sharp wide needle like a denim needle. So here's some fishing netting, some just old pieces of ribbons and trims I have laying around and I'm going to just layer them on top of the cover until I get something I think I like and then I'm going to sew it all down. I do have no idea if this is in the video or not but I will tell you something else that I did, you'll see it for sure at the end. I took an elastic hair tie, I cut it in half, I tied a knot in each end and then I sewed it to the back cover and you can kind of see it there and that's the closure, the moleskin inspired closure for the journals. I do take some random bits of mixed media paper, scrapbooking paper, newsprint and that kind of thing and packing paper and I make a couple of signatures for each book and I use a simple three-hole pamphlet stitch to sew the signatures into the book. I didn't measure anything, it's very organic and I love the way they turned out. I'm using a bookbinding needle and bookbinding thread to sew them in so they're in there very well and then tying them in the center with three knots. If you don't know what the pamphlet stitch is in bookbinding there's a million YouTube videos out there on it so you can go look one of them up for the exact how-to's but just get them in there, it doesn't matter how. Then I'm taking some tags out of my stash of tags and you can see them sticking out here and I'm attaching them to some of the pages, some of the edges and I love the way they turned out. I ended up making four of these and selling two of them in my etsy shop. I listed them and they sold within the hour. I will probably be making more. I love the way they turned out and I can't wait to paint that within them. I hope you love them too. I hope you have fun making your own little version of the mini skinny using up your paper clips, your tags, your random bits of paper and making a cute little journal that we can paint in as we go forward. All right, that's it for today. Don't forget to check out the description for links to all my websites, etsy shops and everything else. Have a great day. Do something nice for yourself. You deserve it. See you later.