A one-off idea turned into a week of insanity and mutiple trips to the hardware store.

I had walnuts, I make paints, I’m decent at carpentry and I’m just getting into bookbinding — It should have been easy.

Now? My fingers are covered in super glue and I burned off all my knuckle hairs.

It started with figuring out how to cut a walnut into two perfect halves — there is a technique. For all my neat dremel cutting bits, the best method was this youtube video.

My neat dremel bits cleared out the inside and I used wet/dry sandpaper to make the edges flat.

But I made the rookie walnutsmith mistake of adding that silver wire border before anything else. The smallest hinges at the store were still too big and I didn’t want to wait for an order or make my own. While grinding down the screws, stupidly while they were still attached, the shell cracked and the wire popped off. Superglue came to the rescue, even though I’d decided by then that I hated the wire.

I cut pieces of soft leather to cover the hinge, which looked marginally better, and imbedded a metal button on each side to wrap the leather cord for closure. They also make a platform for the walnut to sit level when it’s open. Mineral oil and beeswax was my finish/waterproofing.

The paint dividers are stiff belt leather, and I made the paints using the lake pigment method with my watercolour recipe:

20g of dry pigment to 20g of watercolour base (80g gum agaric solution, 20g glycerine, 20g honey and two drops of clove oil.)

Green came from spinach, yellow from lemon rind, which smells amazing, and the dark brown is iron oxide from steel wool treated with hydrogen peroxide and salt water.

The book covers use the same scrap leather as the cord with a few slices of watercolour paper cut to fit, sewed together with cotton thread.

On the whole, it’s more neat than practical. I’m new to the walnut craft so hopefully the next one will be an improvement.

I’m still going to my next live painting group with this as my “kit” to see what happens.