Red Black Oriental Journal Book

"This is starin' at you kid" (complete with a drawl of an accent)

This book I'm loving. Request for a customised book, red, black and oriental. In my mind I was like, yeah, I'll find that brocade material in red and black with the cherry blossom pattern on it. I've seen in before and I though it'll look well nice.

Nope, couldn't find the material. Damn, now what? I got red and black, but what can I use for oriental? There was a reason why I have lots of these old chinese coins isn't it, because it was waiting to become this, a chic sophisticated book.

I used my all time favourite long stitch binding, which echoes perfectly with the vertical pattern that's happening on the cover and the alternating black and red sections from the exposed spine. And the way the coins were held in place is no accident either, my subsoncious mind works in mysterious ways, so there were lots of vertical lines happenings here.

Detail shot, love the end sheet.

For the inside of the covers, I used a black indian paper with silver skeleton leaves print. I always love these print papers, works wonderfully for this book. The end sheet gave an interesting contrast to all the red and black. Very striking as the cover is turned. You can see how the coin sort of float in the space.

The client loved it when the book was delivered to her. Aaahhh, my work is done.

This book inspired me to do more based on this theme. I've been playing around with sketches of placement of the windows, the number of coins, the spine and the binding. I can't wait to try them out.