Decorating Sketchbooks

I meant to go over this a little bit yesterday, but somehow forgot. I wanted to give some of information on  how I decorated my sketchbook cover. After looking at examples online for inspiration, I even looked up on diarment's blog, which is visually fascinating, but didn't have any tutorials or guides (I am in total fascination of the textures he achieves!) So here's what I used to try to get the same look, even though it's not as impressive or metal looking

Bits of leftover cardboard, mod podge, permanant glue, and acrylic paint. All pictures here on a pretty gnarly looking couch. Also brushes of various sizes and iiiiiiimaaaaaaginaaaaation.
I doodled some concepts to start my design, but my plan eventually just boiled down to where I wanted the big pieces on the cover, and all the details were abstract and improvised.
The first thing I did was cut out the big pieces, then cut out a lot of little detailed ones to create the pattern on the left side. I arranged the pieces in the order they would look best, then glued them down starting from the biggest ones on the bottom. I did not yet glue the large pieces to the cover.

I primed the design with acrylic, then painted over that with white spray paint to smooth out errors in my design and prep it to be painted in the metal texture, which I did with a brush, and I looked over this tutorial even though I didn't have any nice model paints. I think I could go back and do the metal again later, since it doesn't look all that metal-ey, and it looks more painting-shades-of-grey-and-trying-to-even-shade-but-failing-with-a-big-fat-brush.

After painting the metal, I painted the entire cover of my sketchbook the violet color, it had originally been a dark red cardboard one from the clearance aisle. One of my last steps was to decide what to put in the semicircle, paint the moon and Sagittarius design, and glue them all down on the cover. After everything was in place I finished it with a layer of Mod Podge so the dried paint didn't feel gross and so it wouldn't scratch off. Thinking now, it would have been awesome to take in progress pictures...

 Here's an in-progress shot of Skye's sketchbook, which he started with me but didn't finish. It's a painting of a zombie clawing through a door, except he hasn't done the door yet because it's popping up on a higher level than the zombie. His will look awesome once it's finished!!

I hope this post gave you some insight to the process, and maybe it even inspired you? (That'd be really cool, lololol) Buuuuut now I gotta go back to working on my cosplays for the upcoming Naka-koooon X3

Pink orchids and origami~