Altered Book: The Odditorium

We continue to do our monthly swap in these cute little spiral bound calendars.  This month i had the pleasure of working in K's book, entitled The ODDitorium.  We were asked to create colourful pages with equally colourful characters.  Love the trim detail on her spine.

I always wanted to try this - with my love of birds and vintage ephemera.  I used a magazine image of a garden for the background, sanding slightly to make it more aged and soft.  The girls were copied from a vintage cabinet card.  a few details were added to their dresses with blue pens.  These girls didn't have those lovely large hair bows you often see in victorian times, so a bit of vintage seam binding ribbon is soft pink was added.

For this spread i flipped through a decorating magazine looking for inspiration.  I found the elephant in a mattress ad, and the birdbath was actually a high end carved stone bathroom sink.  I added them together with a flock of small birds.  I used a similar garden image for the background and added a few flower stickers for colour.  The water splashes are blue ink and glossy accents to give them some depth.

The sign in page offered us small cards to decorate.  I added a bird and vintage postage stamp and signed the back.  Our hostess D cannot stop exclaiming how much she is LOVING these little books!  They are really developing a fun personality and are quick to alter due to their size.  As there are 6 of us in this round robin swap, we will each get the books to work on twice during the year.  By December the books are fat and full of shared art!