Zentangle Album Cover

I have had a few bad days health-wise, which has kept me on the recliner, but not so bad that I couldn’t be creative! I used the time to create the paper inserts to go into the clear plastic pockets on the cover of the white ring binder I bought recently to be used as my new Zentangle album.

The piece on the front measures 10 5/8 x 12 in, so I cut down a piece of plain white 12 x 12 card, and I also cut the narrow strip for the spine, which measures 1 7/8 x 12 in. I covered both these pieces of card with zentangle patterns, keeping to a fairly fluid, organic design and leaving a bit of white space, surrounding the title panels.

Here is the book completed.

Unfortunately the front cover looks a bit foggy in this photo, because the clear plastic wouldn’t lie completely flat, but you can get the idea, I think. I took the papers and scanned them, which was not as easy as I’d expected, because they were too big for the scanner. The front cover I did in two halves and spliced them together using layers in Serif PhotoPlus, my photo editing software, and unfortunately there is a slight line at the overlap, and it would have involved a tremendous amount of editing to get rid of it, so I didn’t bother! The spine piece I scanned diagnonally, which did mean I could get it all in, but then I had to use the “rotate” tool repeatedly in PhotoPlus, until I’d got the angle exactly vertical.

Here’s the front cover:

and the spine:

I am very pleased with how it all turned out, particularly the spine, with the “hollow” Betweed pattern enclosing the floating title!

I haven’t counted how many patterns I have used for the whole book cover, but it’s a lot! In the process I learnt a few more, and also incorporated some of my own patterns, Y-Pod, Nemnies and Spawn. See if you can spot them!!

Originally I was going to decorate the back cover as well, but decided against it in the end, because a) I was pretty well Zentangled Out after that lot, and also, the D-rings of the ring binder are attached to the back with rivets that go through the transparent cover, and the design would have had to have been smaller, which might have looked a bit peculiar, so I left it white.

While I was doing this, I also drew a whole lot more ATC cards to go in the album, and I’ll be posting about those soon.

 

WOYWW members – please scroll down for this week’s post which I uploaded just before this one. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the glorious mess I have been making!!