Please Visit my Girls

I think one of the reasons I have enjoyed this so much is because of my girls. We've had a ton of fun working on these together! (At least I have... lol) I wanted to share some of their work too! They often inspire me with their very creative ideas. So please take a moment and visit my girls who are in the links to the right.

Page 1- - weaving - The Book Thief Page

This was reccomended by another gal in our yahoo group. This is a weaving of the book page with a message.

(sorry about the glare). She said it is a great way for a person to vent feelings and put a secret message into their book.

I cut the right page into the spine... then I cut a page of red paper the same size as the page. It actually needs to be about a 1/2 in or so smaller because I ended up with one red strip that wouldn't fit.

I wrote my message, cut it up, mixed it up and then wove it into the black painted pages. It was a bit difficult to get them all nice and tight, but I like the end effect. (this might be fun with a picture) you can see my words but there is no way you can figure out what it says. What I wrote was feelings about the book mentioned on the left page. This is the book that inspired this entire journey into making altered books.

Page 10 - 2nd Grand Daughter

This is for my little 2 year old grand daughter. I wanted to do something special and unique. So on the right page we created a snow globe. This is what her picture is in. You can't really see bu there is plastic over her picture. I've put in lots of fun confetti in with it and it does move around when you shake the book.

The rest of it is just fun stuff about here. She's as cute as a bugs ear and she loves looking at her page. She is often heard to say "hold you" when I'm in my craft room. This means she wants to sit on my lap and help!

Page 8 - Favorite Poem

I really wanted this poem to go onto the family page but it would have covered up to much of the color. So I just threw this page together and pasted the poem here.

I think it's fun to see some of the underlying words through the paint.

Page 7 - Family Page

Yay I finally have more batteries! This page was created from nothing but scrapbook paper. I found myself looking at papers I had and thinking of family members. So each paper on this page is someone special in my life. All the way from my parents and sisters to my spouse, children, grandchildren and special friends. (I'm the dark purple strip that goes from the top right corner to the bottom left corner.) My family is what makes me who I am! This was a really fun page to make and super fast to do!

Out of batteries for the camera!

Dang, the camera just died so no more pictures this morning. As you can see I am loving this new form of art. I plan on doing up my missionary's scrapbooks this way. I've tried really hard to get into scrapbooking but I just can't do it. I've seen this done as an Art Journal, a Personal Journal, and I'm looking forward to doing this with a class of teenagers I'm teaching right now.

I would never have thought that I would be ripping up pages, painting them, destorying them and taking a book apart like this. However since this book was already on it's way to the dump I guess you could say that I've saved it. Like I mentioned before I figured this was just a technique book... just something to learn on.

Yet if you've noticed I've incorporated my love of books by adding quotes to each and every page. So this has become my Book Journal! I can't even imagine throwing this out now, it's become to dear to me.

Book #1 - Page 7 - Lots of pockets of Fall!

Fall is my favorite season so it only makes sense that I do a page about it. I stamped up the rgith page and thought it was lovely. However when I tried to stamp the left side I ran into a big mess. Because of the tags on the previous page they didn't stamp well.

So once again the brown paint came to the rescue. I then stamped the leaves onto some fall paper and just sort of decorated the left side.

The red trianges in the middle are also pockets. Two upper and two lower ones. I've made some little leaf tags since I took this picture. I want to try drying some leaves and laminating them to put into the pockets too. However I'll have to wait until fall to try that one. So for now my little tags will just have to work! :)

Book #1 - Page #6 - Grand daughter

We created a space for some tags to go into. The top tag is a picture she drew of her family. The second tag is an I love you tag for me. The pull in and out pretty easily and it was a fun technique to try out.

Needless to say when one child has something the others need the same. So here is my grand daughters page.

As you can tell she LOVES pink!

Every time she comes over we have to add more glitter to something on the page. She loves her glitter and she loves to help me work on my book. Notice the green and yellow string coming from the edge of the page?

Book #1 - Page 5 - Grandson (start at the bottom of this post to get it in the right order)

This is what the page has grown too! We added glitter on the door yesterday. It's a fun page and it's all about him. I'm sure as we find more things we will add more in the little nooks and crannies of the page.

We had to try something new so we created a little window with his picture hidden behind it. Everytime the grand kids come over they want to see the book, see their page and see what they can find to add to it!

My grandson saw me painting in a book and thought it looked pretty neat. He asked if he could help me paint in the book. So he picked a nice blue and helped me paint the page. It only makes sense that the page soon became his. This was his book in the early stages.

Book #1 - Page #4 - Pocket #2

I started this page with the idea that it would be all about me. That is why it is purple. In the hopes of some new look or effect I took a inkpad and just rubbed it over the surface of the pages.
It still showed to much text so I covered it with some pearlized paint. On the right page I created a pocket out of a couple of pages glue together then just ripped in half. The top edge didn't look good so I added scrapbook paper that looked like postcards.

I never could figure out what to put on it about me, but it grew into a lovely page that I do like. I made matching postcards and tags out of a wash of light purple paint.

Book #1 - Page #3 - Honest Abe

I started this page by gluing on some ripped up pages from my trash. I didn't like how it looked so I added the pennies on the left side.

Still unhappy I printed up this quote on the right, it was on a book back I just picked up from Barnes and Noble. After that it didn't take time to find a photo, a couple of more quotes and it started to come together. I bronzed the whole page so that it looks like a penny.

It's not what I started out to create but I like the finished product. It just goes to show you have to go with the inspiration when it hits ya! :)

Book #1 - Page #2 - Pockets

So with my second page I decided to try pockets. I am much happier with this page than my first.

I just ripped 4 pages at different lengths, painted them and did a little stamping. I glued a pink envelope on the left page to put love notes in from my husband.

Yes that is my husband in his Santa suit tucked in the first pocket on the right side. I have several book quotes to go into the rest of the pocket space. This page was fun to do and very easy.

Book #1 - Page #1

This is my first page it was a disaster fromt the start. I did some painting and stamping and it was a mess. So I kept tryng to make it look better and it got worse. So I just painted over the whole thing in a dark brown. I tossed on some quotes and walked away from my first disaster!

I learned that this is a very forgiving art form. If you don't like it you can rip it out, glue it together and make it disappear or paint over the whole mess.

Altered book #1

Well I decided that if I was going to teach this to a group of 15 teen. I had better jump in quick and see what I could figure out. So I figugured this would be my technique book and that I could mess it up all I wanted and it would be alright. I could always throw it away if it was awful and I wouldn't be out anything. (little did I know back then...)

So I've been working on this for the last couple of weeks and I'm hooked! This book has become a treasure to me. Some of the pages are a mess, but that's part of experimenting and I love it.
It's one of the most forgiving crafts/art/skill that I have ever done. It's relaxing, calming, enjoyable... it's ME!

My son Davy picked up a book from the local library a couple of years ago. It was on their rack of get rid of stuff and I think he bought it for a quarater. When he got it home and started reading it he discovered that it was part of a series. So I've used this for my first book.

I'll try to post the pages as I do them.

The Book Thief

Recently a local librarian suggested I read the book - "The Book Thief" and make an altered book. She suggested I do this with my teen group that I work with at the library. I had never heard of an altered book so I started searching. It captivated my interested so I read the book and jumped in feet first! I've been trying to share pictures with people and I finally decided that making a blog would just be much easier. So this is a blog of my journey in altering books. So please come along for the ride.