Creating a page

I am sure you can all relate to the little bit of space there is left on your work surface once you start creating! Here I am creating a page for my Chunky Art Book in about 6" square with a table full of "stuff" to choose from!!
It was a very fun project!!
I provided the students with a copius amount of papers, images, accents, embellishments, words and letters to augment the ones they had created in previous classes as they started creating their books. First of all, we glued decorative paper to both sides of the pages being sure not to cover the holes. All the pages were pressed for a weekend to give a nice flat surface. We coloured the spine and edges with black marker to give them a nice finished look. Then, the process of creation began!! Choosing elements, designing a layout, adding, rejecting pieces until both covers seemed finished. Gluing everything into place and making changes on the fly!! A reminder to organize pages and keep them all upright and properly aligned with each other was heeded by most. It took several days for the pages to be finished and even then, last minute items were added to finish them off!! We added the bindings and the Chunky art books were a reality. Once the pages were done we had a session of playing with shrink plastic to make the charms they would be using to decorate the spine of their chunky books!!
They were provided with blanks of Rough and Ready shrink plastic about 1.5"x 2" and reminded that the charms would shrink by about 60% so it was advisable to use most of the rectangle to create the charm. They used Sharpie markers on the smooth side to create their designs and pencil crayons on the rough side to colour them. Some used only coloured pencils to create their charms!! Once punched with a 1/4" hole for attaching, the students enjoyed using the heat guns to shrink their charms and watching "the dance" of the shrink plastic!! I added my charms between the pages on the top rung of my binding using colourful fibers. To help keep that rung of the binding closed so no charms are lost I applied double sided tape between it and the back of the spine. The students added their charms as they wished to their books.
The books are as individual as the students!!

Therese