At our art and design class in December, part of our assignment was to “find Christmas in La Conner”. Then we were to sketch a few of the holiday ideas that we found. I did a couple of these in class but finished them up when I got home. Another part of our homework was to make a book with an accordion binding. So I combined the two and made a Christmas in La Conner Book.

Here’s the front cover. I used some little red felt balls for holly berries and covered them with glazing medium.

Each page has a sketch of some of the Christmas decorations I saw in downtown La Conner.

You can enlarge the photos to see the sketches a little better.

I used glitter on this one and it is now everywhere. But it looks like the bell I saw on the big Christmas tree that was down by the sound.

I didn’t think it quite had enough on the pages with just the sketches so I photocopied an old piece of sheet music from my Dad. It is Silver Bells and he used to play it on the piano at Christmas time.

And the last page is Santa peeking at you to see if you are naughty or nice.

Here’s the full book from the top. The binding was made with Japanese rice paper that had been coated with paint and matte medium. I tried to use fabric but I couldn’t get it to fold correctly and I thought the paper worked much better. I still have some of the fabric folded accordion style and may try it with another book. This is a pretty simple book binding and works well if you can fold straight 🙂