Artist's Canvas and water colour paper Portfolio Folder

Artist's Canvas and water colour paper Portfolio Folder

Good evening my little Loopy loo's.  Holy Moly it is extremely stormy here in Northern Ireland!!  Its mental out there!  Anyway, here is a little something I made for a very dear friend who I'm sure you've heard me mention before, Fiona Jennings. She has a Youtube Channel called Jennings644 .

Fiona is an incredible crafter and an extremely talented artist as well.  She has been very supportive of me and extremely generous when it comes to sending me craft goodies.  I wanted to make her something that she wouldn't have (I hope!!) but I wanted it to be something that had little or no decoration on it so she could fill it completely, cover to back with her creativity.

So I decided to make her a Canvas and Water Colour Portfolio folder.  WARNING....the photos will be boring!  As they are pretty much showing white canvas and white water colour paper.  BUT this is the whole point of this folder.  I wanted Fiona to be able to decorate or paint the covers any way she wanted so the folder itself is made from canvas.  The pages are all water colour papers, A3 in size and I used a very simple binding technique which is so easy and fast but very strong.

I wanted the pages to keep the A3 size as much as possible.  I don't own a Bind-It-All or a Zutter machine so I couldn't use that technique. But to be honest, I don't think it would have looked right using comb binders. I wanted it to be a folder style portfolio and sort of rustic in its constructions so I decided to do a book binding technique instead using waxed thread. And as I do bookbind I was pretty confident I could make a strong binding to hold the pages to the canvas whilst maintain a rustic style folder that can withstand being thrown into the car or a bag and being used outside or inside.  I really hope she likes it and paints many beautiful paintings in it.

Completely plain so Fi can paint or decorate the canvas cover

This is actually off an earring that I bought from Primark and of course I took it apart to use as the closure for the folder

I added some pretty beads on the end of the waxed thread closure.  Fi's favourite colour is purple.

The beads consist of glass, cracked glass, acrylic and metal beads with bead caps

How the folder opens....please excuse the jammies...I was taking photos at 5am!!

The A3 pages are folded over but not creased down flat.  This means there is less of a crease in the page and as its water colour paper, what little fold line there is will be easier to paint over or flatten out

You can see the binding just about on the left hand side.  The inside of the cover has a sheet of watercolour paper on it so this can also be painted on.  It can be used in a landscape layout......such a messy desk!  Please ignore...if you can, lol

It can also be used in a portrait position.  The great thing is that both inside covers are watercolour paper so it can also be painted which means you could have essentially a page that is either an 2x A3 pages in a portrait or landscape position.  It would be great for a gorgeous landscape picture.

Here is the bound spine.  The waxed binding thread also becomes the closure for the folder. I then added the beads on to the end of the waxed thread.

And that's it folks.  Short and sweet.  Not too much waffle today!  I hope Fiona likes this and I cant wait to see how she decorates the outside as well as the inside.

Toodles Noodles.....Lee aka Crafty Loops xx

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