My foray into altered books

I jumped feet first into altered books with only the Bev Brazelton how-to book as my guide.  Being a Francophile, or, more accurately, a Parisophile, I used Paris as the theme of my book, which I created from an oversized French grammar book.  It was rather frightening at first to tear pages out of an existing book, but I got over that very quickly!  I stole freely from the ideas in Brazelton's book--not perfect, but I was learning from it and from my errors!  [ Right:  The cover of my Paris book, so aptly and originally named Paris...  The picture is a silk one from Stampington's French Flea Market; it sits on a textured background made of Golden molding paste and acrylic; and the jacket is wrapping paper from a birthday present I received.]

[Left:  One of the spreads of the Paris book, using a rubber stamping, post card, decorative papers, tags, and even photos from the original book.]

I also included a niche at the back, which I botched royally.  But overall, I was fairly pleased with the effort, considering I'd had no real instruction--certainly a step up from the "collage journal" of Spain!


Continuing my travel theme, I decided to try a boxed set of altered books in one of my "Anything Goes" classes with Lea.  I used the two-part box in which my very first Kindle came (the first Kindle included a cover, so there was a side of the box for the Kindle and one for its cover) and hunted all over town for a couple of used books that fit the measurements of the box.

The book on the left contained Paris/Poland; on the right was London/Spain.  As I've already shown the Paris altered book, I will only show excerpts from the other sections of these.






My husband and I had gone to Poland so that I could visit the home of my ancestors--that was in Lomza, in northeastern Poland, and we made that trek.  But we based ourselves in Warsaw and Krakow.  The spread at left represents the old Jewish sector of Krakow--I used post cards, rubber stamps, art from brochures, tags, business cards, etc., to create these pages.




We spent one day at Auschwitz/Birkenau--an unforgettable day.  I never thought I would be able to translate that experience into art, but this may be the most powerful thing I've ever put into an altered book (or maybe into anything else).  I used scans of philatelic materials, plus acetate, wire, and photos and text from books and brochures to try to capture the essence of the visit.



This was one of the spreads from the London section--using rubber stamping, tags, brads, German scrap, and decorative papers to create a vintage look at London.






The Spain section of the second boxed book was much more colorful, as was Spain, in general.  I used post cards, postage stamps, rubber stamp inks, and background text to show a couple of the main things people think about when they envision Spain--Flamenco and bullfights (saw the former but not interested in the latter while we were there).





This was the niche that I did for this boxed set.  Cutting out a niche is killer.  I had my husband try it this time--no better luck--the edges were so ragged that I covered them with patterned tissue paper!  But the content of the niche was so colorful that it more than made up for everything--a hand painted hand in the style of Chagall that I got in Cordoba.




I have done a couple of other altered art works that I will show next, including a sort-of altered book, but basically, that was it for my altered book period!  On to other things...