Altered Books

As a creative endeavor, a group of 4 of my students and myself decided to do an altered book exchange. Each person was to get an appropriate book and choose a theme, and then complete 3 'spreads' (two facing pages) and then pass it on to the next person to do 3 spreads, etc, until everyone had worked in each others book. One of the members, Sheila, had recycling as her theme and the parameters were that you weren't allowed to use anything that you had purchased specially for the book ( ie: you had to recycle your art materials, etc.).
For this spread, after I painted the pages, I took some of the stuff that I found around our family's summer cottage, such as old Monopoly money, poker chips and a tiddly wink, a puzzle piece (from a puzzle that already had lost pieces!), some birch bark, and some maple and fern leaves along with a piece of a photo I took at the cottage.

This spread was fun! I glued about 1/2" of pages together and cut an opening out to hold a 3D cow I had made previously (at the Glenbow's exhibition of Joe Fafard's work -I just love going into the 'make it-take it' room and create with the kids!). I then cut 2 smaller openings to hold some bees (for some reason bees keep getting into my basement and then die there, leaving the most amazing intact specimens) which I poured self-leveling gel around to encase them. Then I covered the openings with a sheet of bingo paper I had bought previously from the scrapbooking store (great source of stuff!). On the facing page I glued a sheet of crossword scrapbook paper.

On this spread I decided to play with colour, and not worry too much about images. I decided to work with an interesting tertiary tetrad of yellow orange, red violet, blue green and yellow green. I used pieces cut from magazines, painted pages and a cut-out from a stamped card and then played with the design and colour placement. A great way to explore how colour schemes work together.
We are all getting together for our final party on Nov 24th, where we will get to see all the books completed and share experiences over a glass (or two) of wine. It has been a wonderfully creative experience, and I highly recommend it!

Enjoy!

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