More altered book

This really IS a spread by Cheryl! She took off on the image of the bird on the left page, then painted the right hand text page, leaving a section of text about birds, and highlighted blue-paint-blue-Bird from that. Then she cut a window out of that page and inserted a coregated cardboard tag to which she attached some wool. When you pull on the tag, it reveals...
the birds nest! Now how cool is that!

This is my favorite spread done by Lindsay. She took off on the photo of the kangaroo on the right page and made her own page using collage papers cut into neat shapes. Then she painted the boy and dog on separate cardstock, and attached them to the piece of card that says her word JUMP. When you pull up on that tab, the boy and dog rise up on the page! Then to top it off, she has a bit of text above the kangaroo saying "Ummm..not bad for beginners". What a hoot. This really has been the most remarkable project.

I have been asked why I am not posting any paintings lately. The answer is simple, I haven't been doing any! I have been learning photoshop (HUGE!) and how to digitally manipulate images (even huger -is that even a word?) , which I hope will help in my collage and more abstract work. One of my students took some step-by-step photos of a demo I did for my mixed media class, which I shall post soon. Life seems to be extremely busy for me right now, but hopefully things will settle down soon. I still have to read half the library books I posted earlier -sigh -so much to do, so little time.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

More of my altered book

This is one of Sheila's spreads in my book. Actually, in my last book post, I credited Cheryl with the spread FREE, but it was really done by Sheila -sorry about that! The image of the ducks was in the book, and Sheila thought that the negative space between them looked like a heart, which it so does, so she decided to go with a LOVE theme for this spread. She painted on the photo to enhance the heart and then did multiple layers of collage on the other page.
This is another of Lindsay's spreads. Her four letter word was CAKE, and she found this old magazine photo of a homemaker which she collaged on the beautifully feathered bird book photo. She gave the woman a cake hat, and collaged other cake references throughout.
This has really been a memorable project.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

More of my Altered Book project

This is another of the spreads that Heidi did in my book. She got the idea because the image in the book that is now underneath the piece of handmade unryu paper is a tree frog. The little envelope has a page with a description of the life of a tree frog. She collaged the tree frog image and painted the leaves and the dots. Lots of four letter words there :)
This is one of Cheryl Quist's spreads. The top half of the spread is the book image, on which Cheryl painted and added more birds (not quite sure how she did that, but she negatively painted the white birds). Then she collaged a wonderfully free woman after painting over the text page, outlined some more gulls in pen and added the four letter word FREE. I love the way that Cheryl used the book pages in this spread.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me.

Here's the tags

Here are the tags from the PLAY spread in my book, which I posted last. The top left tag (which you can see well due to camera glare) has a photo of ducks on it from a National Geographic. To its right is a tag that I did from a napkin that had corks on it -on the back is a word diagram of the word CORK (I found this cool thing on the net, but can't remember where!-it shows all the associations of a word). Next is a tag by Lindsay of a leaf cutout, complete with leaf charm. Next is one of Heidi's tags -she did a search for four letter words and printed them out. She then collaged a part of the list on the tag, and then made hang tags of all the four letter colour words. On the bottom row at right are two of Sheila's tags, made with magazine images covered with a neat plastic sleeve. Next is the back of the tag that was prominant in the last post -it has embossed music on the bottom, then more stamping and embossing on top. The letters are rub ons. The last tag was also made by Heidi, and ties her book (theme of Hospitali -TEA) to mine. And lastly is my paper doll.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

What -Altered Books?

These are two more of my spreads that I did in my Altered Book -themed Four Letter Words. The image on the right was in the book already. I got Heidi to write Pink Buds in calligraphy for me. These are really not flower petals, but some cool moths! Love the pink with the yellow green. On the left side, I stamped over the text with Ultramarine blue and gold acylic paint -for the stamp I cut a piece of styrofoam packing that held a computer -it had some symbols embossed into it, and I thought, "I wonder what this would stamp like?" ALWAYS answer the 'what if?' question with trying it -that is how you learn all kinds of great stuff, and also what works and what doesn't. I then attached another distressed photo of one of my paintings -just wet the photo, and scratch at the edges with sandpaper -the LEAF was scratched out with an awl. Just wait to see what else you can do to alter photos!

This spread is actually a series of pockets. On the left hand side there is one pocket made by folding back one of the photo pages from the book. This is secured with eyelets. The back page is another image from the book. Inside this pocket I have placed a paper doll that I made out of papers I had previously painted and decorated (see post Jan 24/09) which I backed with cardstock. I added a skirt made out of lace -the movable arms, head and legs are possible because of the brads joining the pieces. The PLAY was cut out of the collage papers as well.
On the right side there are 3 pockets of differing depths, secured at the top edges with eyelets through which red and yellow cording was strung, and tied with bows. Inside each pocket are three tags -each person was to decorate 2 of the tags. I have clipped one of my tags to the front of that page just to show you an example. The tags gave us a small format to try new things on I did have a problem holding the tags in place which I thought I had solved with some double sided tape, but it has since released so will have to come up with another idea. It is too deep into the page to use staples, which would be easy. Suggestions? I will post a photo of the tags and the doll tomorrow.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

Altered Book Again

I did these two spreads after the exchange was over. I had removed many of the less interesting pages, primarily text pages, from my book as it was way too thick after all the altering was done. I did this with a craft knife, cutting very close to the seam. On the left side there was a photo of an ugly looking snake thing (YUCK!) so I camouflaged it with transparent glazes of Jenkins Green acrylics. I put another medallion that I made (see post Dec 26th for directions) on top. On the right side I stuck on a Canada sticker as the forest looks so much like the forest at our cottage. I then stuck on the HOME that I cut from a magazine. I still might do something else to this spread -any suggestions?

This is another spread where I had removed pages between the two image pages. I loved the little blue moths on the right, and BLUE has four letters, so it was game. On the left side I collaged on a blue jay feather I had found, which I had kept in my treasures box. It is a great idea to use your found treasures in your altered book!

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

Still More Altered Book Project Pages

These 2 spreads I did after the round robin exchange was finished -I still have half a dozen spreads left to do! The image of the fossil on the right was in the book. I liked the colours so decided to work with that palette. I painted a shell over top of the text on the left hand page, highlighting some of the words from the book. I made an origami envelope which I collaged onto the page. Inside it says "LESS is MORE". Playing off the theme Four Letter Words, I let the numeral represent the word FOUR. On the right hand page, I took a photo of one of my finished collages, distressed the photo by wetting it and then giving the edges a scrub with sandpaper. I then collaged it on the fossil. To finish the spread, I spritzed it all with my new favorite, apricot coloured Glimmer Mist. ( see a video on how to use this product)


This spread had a photograph on both pages. I thought for a long while about what to do with this, and then I saw where someone had written text around an image, and voila, the idea was there, and I proceeded to write steam of consciousness ideas about what it would be like to live on this island. What fun! I used a silver Sharpie on the dark parts and a blue Sharpie on the light parts. I had fun with the lettering of LAND, following my renewed interest in scripts and calligraphy.

Enjoy!

For more information on this project, feel free to email me!

More of My Altered Book

This is a spread that Heidi did in my book. She took off on the image of the jelly fish that was in the book. She worked on a black piece of card that she had made packing tape transfers to look like windows and placed them behind holes she cut in the card. Heidi is an amazing calligrapher, and she wrote the words in an opaque white pen "Jelly fish swim in the deep blue sea. They swim, float and even glow. Their legs help them to flit and dive, on through the sea they go." She added the black page to the book using brads. The text page behind shows through under the images, kind of like seeing the page through an aquarium. Cool!

This spread was made by Lindsay. In this case the original pages were totally obliterated. I had previously painted them with gesso, which I then stamped into when the gesso was still damp, using hand carved stamps with tree themes. Lindsay played with the tree theme and on the left hand spread printed out and collaged a great story about a lonely tree in the desert which had been hit by a drunk driver -too much -click the page to see it larger and read the story. She then stuck on some stylized leaf stickers on top. On the right page she painted a lovely picture of a tree being held by loving hands. She surrounded it with a polka dotted frame and cut out the letters for TREE out of magazine, typed the word root, and collaged them in. I like the way Lindsay played with different fonts in this piece.

Enjoy!

For information about this project, please feel free to email me or comment below!

My Altered Book -2 more spreads

This is one of the spreads that I did in my book. I photocopied a stencil sitting on top of a piece of newspaper and collaged that onto the left hand page. Then I tinted it with Quin gold and Perm Violet Dark acrylics, painting inside some of the letter forms. I cut a strip of that and collaged it to the right photo page. I stenciled the words with opaque paint and outlined them with markers. The center element is medallion that I made on mat board with several layers of thick embossing powders, painted between layers with red and green ink. When the last layer was still warm, I pressed a rubber stamp in the shape of a frog into it, revealing the colours underneath. Then I rubbed some gold Rub-and-Buff over the top to highlight the frog.

In this spread (also one of mine) for the background, I applied crackle medium to the left hand page, which had been painted a dark brown, and then tinted the medium with a transparent blue glaze. I then collaged the photos and puzzle shaped ladies on top, along with the text. I cut out the ARTS word and painted each one before collaging them. The right hand side held a microscopic photo of cells, which began the idea of the spread relating arts and life. For the image of the baby, I cut it out of a magazine and then made a triple mat for it before collaging it on. The quote is from Henry Moore, and I thought it was most appropriate.

Enjoy!

For any information on this or on any of my work, please feel free to email me.

My Altered Book Project

As I am not painting now (my four kids are all home for the holidays -yipee!) I thought I would entertain you with pictures of my altered book project, along with some of the techniques used. This was a project that I began in the spring, collaborating with 4 friends/students of mine. The idea was that each person was to choose a book to alter and a theme. Then each person would do 3 spreads (2 facing pages) in each others book per month and then we got together to have a play date (the most fun part of the project -we would share ideas and techniques we had learned) and then we would exchange the books. This lasted from May to November when we had our final wrap up party and got to see all the books completed.
My book theme was 'Four Letter Words' -the idea was not my own, I saw it on my travels through the wonderful world of the net. I choose a book called "Life On Earth" by David Attenborough to alter. It has great pages with a bit of sheen and tons of full page photographs. It was fun to see how each artist bounced off the images in their spreads.
This is my book cover. The numeral is done with light modeling paste pressed through a number stencil and then over painted with acrylic paint. The "LETTER" is made from some dimensional scrabble letters I picked up at a scrapbooking store. The "WORDS" is some fun foam letters that I painted gold. I spritzed the cover with a new favorite called 'Glimmer Mist' in an apricot shade. I put grommets through the cover with Cheryl's punch and hung an earring in one hole for a decoration. I decided to add ties to keep the whole thing together. At the ends of these gold chords I attached a gold painted acorn and a carving of a duck that my oldest son did when he was very little, both relics from our cottage in Ontario.

This is the title page of the book, in keeping with the word theme. I altered it by first painting the pages with Quin gold and red, and then painted it through a dye-cut letter stencil (again from the scrapbook store-got to love those guys!) with red and black, masking the Life and Art so that it wouldn't get covered. The silhouette was an image cut from a national geographic magazine (I have a PILE of oldies that I go to for neat images and text).

Enjoy!

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!

To ask a question, or commission your own painting, please email me.

new adventure

I have asked six art friends to collaborate with me on an altered book round robin project. For our project, we were each to select a theme for our individual books, and then select a book to alter. Each artist is to complete 3 spreads (2 facing pages) and then pass it on to the next artist with a description of the theme. Then each subsequent artist interprets the theme in her own manner. Now you have to know that none of us have ever done anything like this before, but each is an accomplished or upcoming mixed media artist in their own right. We are doing this as a total learning experience -a 'playpen' if you will to try all kinds of things before using them in our own artwork.
For my theme, I pirated an idea I saw on the web -but I cannot remember where I saw it! Sorry!! My book will be called "Four Letter Words". I just loved this theme as it is so open ended. I love the fact that 'four letter words' have a vulgar connotation, but on closer inspection there are a lot of very beautiful four letter words.
This is my first completed spread. I must admit that I rather suck at this, but hopefully will get more confident with time! For this spread I used image transfers of cute photos of my kids -these are the images that you can see the text through. When the transfers were done, I loved the way the 'ghost' looked left on the photo paper, so I collaged those in too. I used seveal different rubber text stamps, a stamp of a clock to show how time has flown (they are no longer the cherubic cuties shown here -they have grown into their beauty) and sponge painted in burnt orange, white and gold acrylic. I masked out words from the text that seemed to tell their story. Unfortunately I had to use a flash to photograph these and it just lights up the metalic paint. My four letter words: 'Guys' & 'Doll' -3 boys and l girl -also my middle son had the lead in a stage production of Guys & Dolls, so it has a bit more meaning than usual for me.
Enjoy!