Saturday, February 23, 2008

A New Round Robin Begins.....!

I just finished my newest altered book. I will be swapping tomorrow with a group of friends that have been meeting for about two years. I don't how these things come to me, but i decided that the book will be called "Things I Suck At". I would illustrate things i, you know, suck at, and ask my arty friends to do the same.
I started with an interesting book from the Library Used Book Store in Novato. Other than estate sales it is my main source for cheap old books. I just loved the shape - a bit taller than normal for a novel, and it has a nice stencil-y printed modified fleurs de lis on the cover. It is actually titled Candide, Voltaire's satire on religion and government. It had the most delightfully naughty illustrations which i removed for future use.
When removing those pages i discovered that the pages are VERY brittle. Instead of turning - they kind of tear off in your hand. YIKES. Not cool for an altered book that will require some man-handling. I glued some pages together to add strength and decided it was ok to continue.
I stamped some thesaurus words for "sucked" on the cover, then added letters and stickers for the title. I used dictionary pages for the inside covers, front and back, adding some red ink from an ink pad for colour. Since i had to apply tape to prevent more pages from falling out, tape became the embellishment for this otherwise minimalist book. I used red on the binding and to outline the illustrations front and back. I used silver metallic tape form the simple sign in page pockets and also on the driving page. I used even more tape as the background for the straws page.

In the intro page i instruct the artists to visually depict something they suck at. And you are not allowed to SAY what it is! You must use pictures to illustrate your failures!!

So tell me, can you tell what it is I suck at?? Please leave a comment with your guesses. I'll send a goodie bag to the person closest to the sad truth.

2 comments:

Chris Flynn said...

Hey Diane... just discoved your blog this morning! I'm impressed and have lots of ideas. I have an antique store in Boulder Creek and have hoarded TONS of old books, ephemera, etc. Seems like we might have allot in common! And I'm going to Asilomar too. Saw your commet to Glenny and clicked on your blog!

Soo... I think you suck at blowing the ends off your straws. right?

hmmm

lets hope this rain stops!

here's a hug from the soggy Redwoods,
Chris

Aileen said...

Hmm....you suck at backing up....the second picture I really can't tell what it is but to me it looks like candles LOL so you suck at making candles?!? LOL I do hope you let us know :-)