Started June 2003
This project was originated by Sharon Ready of Stamphappy fame. A bunch of us decided to do an altered book each, with a set topic each week. No swapping, no mailing, no stress, just a fun opportunity to support each other in a new endeavour.
There has been much discussion of each step, which has been very excitiing and supportive.
Here's my results(to be updated as I do them).
Here's the index of pages:
This page had tons of paint, spread on with a credit card (fun, not too messy, and nice grungy results, I find). I was making a deliberate effort to go fairly grungy with this page. Well, that's my excuse. A little envelope I had been hoarding came out - it contains the story of how I got my name. That's me in the photo with my Mum and daughter (when she was little). This is the daughter who, at a very responsible seven years of age, came into the kitchen to find me carving a letter "P" out of a perfectly good book. I'm mostly keeping the altered book quite around the house now.
I used my handy quote generators (the kids) to help me with this page. The botanical drawings are an inkjet image transfer, done my *special* way.
On this page we used the theme of "colour". Lots of scope there ... lots of scope for MESS, that is! I started by scribbling all over the pages in crayons, using blues, greens and purples. Then a coat of black Chromacryl paint all over the top, and while still wet, I stamped into the paint. I stamped a Stamp-it butterfly, and the words "Do you see?". It lifted some of the black to show the colours (but not a lot). I let it dry a bit, and wiped over it with a damp cloth, when magically ... not much happened. I let it fully dry, and sanded it lightly. The butterflies popped out a bit, but the colour underneath hardly showed.I rubbed a little purple Chromacryl paint over it and wrote over the stamped words in Marvy Metallic gold marker. Then I added torn purple paper, stamping on it too. Then I outlined the Marvy'd letters with gold gel pen. Then I spattered the while thing with cheap gold paint. This is not a series of steps I'd recommend...
For this page we selected a quote that inspired us. Well, I found this one pretty inspirational when DH got me to sit down and watch "Conan The Barbarian" with him!
"Crush your enemies; See them driven before you; Hear the lamentaion of their women"
Phew, quite a quote. Better take it REEEEALLY seriously. Click on the image to lift the flap.
A page on your favourite drink? What a neat idea! I am a tea fan, so that was the choice. Unfortunately, I didn't like this page, and since it's a "no going back" project, I felt a bit stalled. I do want to do another page in honour of tea. I sure want to drink some, anyway. So in the spirit of owning up to the stuff that didn't really work, here's my "Tea" page. Inside the frame is a picture of my favourite tea cup (cut you can't see it well enough). The punched tea pots are fun, definitely a theme in themselves. My daughter convinced me to put faces on them...
This theme had me baffled for a while. It's ALL paper, so what can I do to make it more about paper. Looked for quotes (no real luck). Then I went to stamp club, and the lovely Ingrid had just bought a great tree punch (from EK Success). She handed me a punched out tree, and it all came from there. The background was leftover paint from a credit card painting session. What's that? Tell ya later.
"Paper doesn't grow on trees, y'know"
Oh, *JEWELS* - I thought you said ... oh, never mind...
This one is a two pager:
"You won't believe this, Mr Verne..."; "... or maybe you will ..."
"... but we MADE it!" ; "Thanks for the vision!"
I puzzled over this one for a while - there are so many cool animals, but which one is important enough to be included here? In the end my daughter told me straight out "You should do this..." and recited the poem you see here. She says she made it up. It's awfully slick for a seven year old to come up with on the spot, so I wonder if she read it somewhere. Let me know if you recognise it. I didn't add much to it, just stamped it in a great alphabet stamp set.
You have to see this one in real life - no, really! I painted in black, then stamped and embossed in clear, then painted in black again - you know, to emphasise texture above everything else. Then I highlighted the texture with gold rub-ons. The stamp is an interesting Hero Arts geometric design. I did manage to get quite a lot of ... ahh ... texture .... from my brush strokes and my warped paper (as a result of using the first glue I grabbed!). That's all part of it, really.
It took a while to get to this page. I asked the Stamphappy email list for some input - a random word to get me started. I hadn't planned to make an altered book page that night, but that's how it turned out. One of the words was "Arpeggio" (thanks Barb). I aimed to do a visual representation of an arpeggio. Well, it was an excuse to use a music note punch. Spookily, the word has eight letters, so does a music scale, and ... I find eight page concertinas the easiest to fold! It was FATE!
The Music page - "notes sounded in quick succession, not together".
Inside the concertina - "ARPEGGIO".
It took a while, but here's the front cover! Interesting ... I started with plain brown paper covering the book - that was only ever meant to be a temporary cover. But one day I smeared some paint onto it - with a credit card - then another colour - then another - then some gold... Well, it looked AWFUL. Particularly since the book was already covered - I couldn't get the paint to cover the edges and spine nicely. I was ready to tear off the cover again, when I decided to cover the spine, and cap the corners, with some nice handmade paper. Added strength, covered the odd unpainted bits, covered the tear I had introduced (!), and just looked great.
That's me in the little photo - I printed it onto metallic paper, a very nice effect, and not a lot of effort.
Some other players have their books available to see too :
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