If you look closely you can see some of the seed beads at the bottom of the fringe.

ID: Piano Hinge Book #3 "Xmas Ornament"

Journal only (closed): approx 2"w x 3.75"h x 5/8" thk.
Journal only (open): approx 4.25"w x 3.75"h
approx 7"h from top of cascading fringe to bottom of fringe

This is my third piano hinge book. My second piano hinge book was also shaped in a ball, but much larger. I wanted one that was small enough to use as a Christmas ornament, but large enough to write some quotes and things inside. I also wanted to be able to hang it so it's totally constructed with metallic (5 different colors) embroidery floss. In my previous two books I found the pages in between the signatures were difficult to open nicely, so this time I used single page signatures. Now everything opens beautifully. I am content...

I also wanted my floss to cascade like in my previous book with the Mizuhiki cords, so I tied all the floss together at the top of the pages with a big knot, which was nice but not cascading enough, so I then did a bunch of half hitch knots working up & using the cluster of threads as a core. I unraveled the individual strands from each floss strand and added some seed beads on some of the threads. I got lazy and didn't continue putting a lot more seed beads. One day. 

I used scrapbook paper in my previous book and found it wasn't forgiving enough and some of the hinges were tearing. This time I used cardstock and some fancy shimmer, metallic embossed and metallic flecked papers. Much better.

I cut my pages with a circle cutter at approx 3.75" diameter. I used a dark blue, purple, magenta cardstock and then white or silver of the decorative papers. Folded them over in half and when everything was aligned properly and marked for my slots, I then re-cut the edges of the circle with my deckle edge cutter and used a Krylon silver leafing pen on the edges (you could add a bit of glitter on the edge as well for a more festive look)

This is a 10 signature book.

I used a very heavy mulberry type paper that had been dyed  multiple colors as well as images stamped and then enhanced with silver. Beautiful paper.  The Lotus type seed images were large enough to have the image cover the front and inside of a cover, so I cut two of these images (one for the front cover and one for the back cover). In the above picture, the open view looks like the whole seed pod, but it's really two half seed pods meeting at the spine edge.

You can see the knot work a little better in the image at left.

Spine detail

Metallic embroidery threads running through center of signature.  This signature is a white textured & pearlized paper.  

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