Altered Book Swap - Nature Green Revisited

 It is taking a while longer to complete our 2014 altered book round robin, with the colour theme, due to so many of our member's travel schedules.  no problem - what's the rush?  

I last worked in Z's Green themed book last year.  You can see what i did HERE.

 I had selected a couple of architectural images from a travel magazine to use in my spreads.  This elaborate door had a greenish cast to it.  I cut open the door to take a peak inside.  on the left i just filled in the page with a stash of Colombian stamps, since they were, well, very green.  I left some words showing on the page - Morocco and Persia - since they both are evocative of the architecture.

 The next page shows an arch with a man feeding a large creature what could it be?

 How about a large green bird!  

I used small doilies to create a stencil effect by sanding the pages.  

It looks better in person.  

no it doesn't.  

it looks crappy actually.  

but no matter.  

on to the next spread.....

 My next multi page spread was inspired by a book of botanical's i purchased recently.  Since the community where Z and I live has street names of  flowers, it seemed fitting to use those flowers in her book.  I envisioned a victorian ladies journal filled with flowers and birds and butterflies.

Here on the final page are the two ladies - ostensively Z and Me.  Her with a book and me with a bird....  in a beautiful garden on our flowered street named neighborhood!

Thank You Notes...

We spent Memorial Day weekend in the San Francisco Bay area visiting our dear friends.  We wanted to send special thank you notes to our hosts for the weekend and another couple who threw us a lovely luncheon on Saturday.  Both these couples are very interested in flowers and trees and nature and hiking and the outdoors in general.  So that somewhat dictated the theme for the cards!

For both cards i used letter press prints from a vintage quest book.  The illustrations were done by Gwen Frostic. You can see her lovely designs on the website.  I picked up TWO of these books at an estate sale a few years ago. I paired the two illustrations with patterned card stock and made simple folded cards. I added some foreign stamps with flowers images to the front for a bit of colour and well - if you are going to send hand made cards - you want there to be a bit of "hand-made-ness" to them.

Inside i will attach a plain piece of writing paper where we can express our gratitude for the lovely meals and wine and fabulous desserts.  yum.  So i stamped "Gratitude" on the front of the folded paper.  Well, that and because i cannot find one of at least three stamps i own that say "thank you".

Thank you all for a wonderful long weekend.  Hope yours was just as special....!

My Altered Book came home

My altered book, A Gift of Life, was returned home to my new home - down here in Southern California. These two images above are pages straight from the book - no artist intervention. As you may recall, (or read about it here) my book was an illustrated Hallmark book from the 70's with some nice nature images and some seriously schmaltzy prose about the gift of life - birds and bees, and deer and frogs. My Northern Cal altered book friends have decided to keep the group going - i will participate remotely or virtually or whatever way i can! They met last month for a final swap of the spring books and to initiate the new swap for summer. These two are by Shelly - never content to just do a simple spread,above she did a series of tags that can flipped back and forth to give different views of landscapes. Below she inserted a set of flaps showing an assortment of trees.This page by Carol has pop up fish swimming upstream, with a bonus fish that swings out of a secret pocket on the edge of the page. This page by Dorothy where she took the text printed in the book - and continued with her own handwritten thoughts.

Here are the sign in tags, decorated by each artist:
The great thing about this book, is that because it already had illustrations - with only a dozen or so "altered" pages - it seems done! I could add a few things here and there - but it still feels complete.

Thank you so much to Dorothy, Shelley and Carol for keeping this altered book art going and including me.

Altered Book 2009: A Gift of Life

I just finished preparing my first altered book of 2009, A Gift of Life. I will be swapping the book with my AB group on Sunday. here are some pics of my pages. The book i chose is an illustrated poem book from Hallmark circa 1971. I purchased the book at an estate sale. I decided to use the book's images as the theme - all things nature. Like trees and flowers and birds and bugs and forest animals. The book is quite small, so by the time my AB group is done each creating their own pages, it will be jam packed with the essence of life.
For the cover i used a flocked paper (yes like old wallpaper) with a brown floral pattern on a green background. I decided NOT to add the book's title to the cover - since it is so simple and pretty as is.

Inside the cover was a giant butterfly. I wanted to add another large butterfly and make it pop. But i ended up using a page with dozens of butterflies instead. The ones in the middle pop up and the ones on the right are "loose".
Every altered book that you plan to swap should have an intro. This explains your theme and highlights any do's and dont's for your friends. Next is my title page. It is facing a page of vellum printed with silkweed pods. I used a strand of eyelash yarn to accentuate the feathery-ness of the seed filaments.
The right hand side of this page has the original illustration. A deer (buck?) behind a tree. To compliment the picture i went to my folder of "nature" clippings and papers. I found this magazine pic of a collection of leaves. Without over thinking it, i just cut it to size and glued it into the book. I started doing this kind of collage when i participated in a calendar swap. You had to encorporate the images in the calendar into your collage and journaling. I just worked fast and intuitively, with whatever i had close at hand. After i glued in the leaves i had a space at the bottom that was a perfect fit for a piece of green hand made paper, that i happened to have punched out some leaf shapes for another project. I filled them in with golf glitter dust. I did not know what to "say" on this page, so i added the french dictionary entry for a buck or CERF. Then when looking for something else i found the pewter buck sticker. Well he just finishes this off nicely.
The next page had an illustration of a snowy egret. (at least that's what i think it is!) I had just purchased a pack of scrapbook paper from costco that i split with a friend. it has a similar water fowl sketch on linen-like paper. I like how the grey tones match. I found a audubon event postcard in my stash with another white bird, so i added it too. I made it into a tag with a cluster of fibres. on the back is a poem i found about a blue heron. Embroidery seems to be popping up everywhere, so i added a scrap of fabric and some buttons, choosing ones with thread still attached for that needle work look. When i frayed the edges of the linen, i thought, why not use the threads to accent the reeds?
This spread grew organically. The vellum had weeds on one side and a frog on the other. I added the sepia toned floral and the stones along the bottom. The frog could be seen through the vellum. But it just wasn't strong enough. So i added a BIG frog which actually glides along the ribbon as if to leap off the page. The short poem is about a toad. the eggs were in my "nature" file - no idea what they are or where it came from - but i love how it all looks together.

On the next page you can see the original frog. I added the underside of the large frog and a clipping from a french dictionary - la grenouille. Opposite that a vintage botanical cut from wrapping paper.
Next spread was inspired by a large hand woven bee hive i found in my files. It need a background - something green. I found an old book dust jacket entitled one thousand beautiful things. well my beehive was indeed beautiful, but i was mostly struck by the arch of trees and how it echoed the cone shape of the hive. One small problem - it was too small to fit the page. Back the nature file where i found another arch of trees - perfect! Some vintagey scrapbook paper about the meaning of flowers completes the background. I added some rafia to the edges of the hive to give it some tactile effect. a little tin bumblebee is the only other embellishment.
Then i found ANOTHER cool bee paper - a painting of pears swarming with bees. Well darn, i want to use that too. as luck would have it the very next page in the book had a simple illustration of a fruit tree. I added some sequins to make the flowers pop. The final touch to tie these two spreads together is a poem by Kahlil Gibran called give and take.This spread had green and gold leaves printed on them with a portion of the poem "and summer turns her riches to autumn's gold. I simple covered the whole spread with some leaf printed cellaphane that came wrapped on a bouquet of flowers from the grocery store. To finish off the page i went fibre crazy along one edge.
For the sign in page i decided to capture the book's original poem, since so much will be lost with all the collage. yes - i typed up the whole darn thing. After i cut it out, i needed to keep the sections in order, so i stamped 1-2-3-4. I used these as envelopes for the sign in tags. Each artist will decorate her tag and sign her name. hopefully they will replace the simple string with some more fun fibers!