Seventeen Buddha

I finished my little Seventeen Buddha book today. It was the second experiment using the hemp paper. The front and back covers are hemp paper laminated to paper towel (ordinary kitchen variety). I wanted to strengthen the hemp a bit for the cover, and the paper towel was the correct colors since it was the one I used to wipe my brushes on as I painted the pages. Laugh if you want to, but I like it.  I used acrylic wax varnish, of which I am a huge fan,  for the lamination. The cover decoration is another piece of hemp paper left over from the previous hemp book project. The Japanese stab binding is done in the traditional hemp pattern using silk ribbon. The back cover has snippets of thread trimmed from the stitching inside laminated to it.
I carved a medicine buddha print block,  printed, sprinkled embossing powder, and hit the pages with a heat gun before painting them.



Then I stitched and added the torn silk. This kind of stitching is quite meditative, so it was important to me that I finish each of the seventeen pages before moving on to the next.
 
Some of the printing is clear, some is not. This was intentional, as was the decision to leave the backs of the pages in open view.