Altered Book

The Lady and the Garden was my choice of theme for the altered book at yahoo mixedmedia uk. We started the book last year I already have some photos on how it was altered it took some time to arrive back but the book is now finished.
I had to resew the first three sections back in the book as they had come loose and eventually fallen completely out. I had to think about this first but sewed them back with a coptic stitch onto calico and then into the book but with a touch of paint and new front pages everything fell into place very well. One of the reasons they came out was the way I had divided the pages not making sure there was an overlap that didn't show the stitching between each decorated page.
The book now looks very good and there is some really good art in it. I am going to show this in the autumn at a local hobby exhibition. I have now lent the book to a friend who is going to show it to her local group to encourage them to make a book.

Mixed Media the Next Page

This page is a collage its as near as I'm likely to get to a photo taken at Scalea Southern Italy of old houses going up a hill. The roof tops are made from corrugated card and the tree from other papers.
I have been making my daughter a scrapbook of most of her baby pictures up until she left home. She is now 40 so it took me sometime
three weeks in fact. I felt I had been doing it day and night. Some days I started at nine and went on till four in the afternoon. Oldish photos are not the easiest to deal with I think the camera used at the time was a Kodak and some of the colour is not very good I didn't have the time or the skill to update them in photoshop.

Another Altered Book Page

The title for this book is Beautiful Creatures.
I thought the ballet is very lovely and chose Swan Lake for the beautiful swan. The pages are collaged with paint papers and finished with the pictures and oil pastels. I like collage messing with paint and papers the only thing is its time consuming getting all your stuff out sorting and then getting more out putting it all away and then clearing up the mess.
This spread has turned out very well it all hangs together.

Altered Book Page

Altered book for Becky the theme was along the lines of sending a letter from yourself when young and then from older self. I thought this was a bit scary when I first saw the theme but it was quite a fun one to do. My thoughts went back to when I was 16 I left school at 15. Remember my grandmother telling me she left school at 14 and thinking she was still a child. My granddaughter has just finished college to start teaching and she is almost 23.I collaged about what was big in my life then I headed the page Return to Sender Address Unknown that let me out of writing a letter much to busy having fun at that age.If you look there is a picture of me at 16 on the little book we even looked innocent in those days. The second half you can see is not so busy but life is good and the heading is One More Step Along the World I Go with a book of quotes that have helped me through difficult times.

Altered Book Page

A page for Iris the theme for her book is Wales. Ive only been to Wales once many years ago we went with the children when they were small. We stayed near Caenarfon camping so that immediately came to mind and of course the castle. Ive mixed up some history of Wales along with the Prince of Wales. I did some research on the net to come up with the names and dates I do hope I have spelt them right. I was going to do something about battles with the English but there were quite a lot of them and I got confused with all the Welsh names and places. I decided to simplify the story in case I got in wrong thats why its turned into the Prince of Wales. I hope you don't mind Iris that I have brought the English in.

Altered Book

I have been quiet on my blog lately I have joined an altered book swap with mixedmediauk- see links. I have never made one before I always thought it was a mystical operation I wouldn't be able to do. Becky on the group explained all to the new ones and yes I have done it. There are eight of us in the swap and we post the book off to a new person every month so it wont be back to me

until next year. We all chose our own themes mine is The Lady and the Garden I like anything to do with flowers and gardens. Some of the themes are a bit more difficult than mine I will tell you about them as they come to me. I hope you will be able to follow my instruction for making the book and please leave me a comment I would love to know what you think.

Cutting a lot of the pages out with a sharp knife to reduce the thickness of the book to allow for any embellishments used and also to reduce the weight when posted. I cut the pages out about half to one inch away from the inside of the page. The cut out pages I kept and used the text for my spreads if you click on the photos you will be able to read them

The title page this was printed out on one of the pages I cut from the book the other page is the sign in page

pages sorted for each swap and clipped together. I will only glue my spreads together leaving others to glue and cut as they want

The pages are now glued together and painted with gesso. I used Elmers pva which worked well. I did try using acrylic medium but couldn't tell the difference so as pva is much cheaper have used that although I used the acrylic to stick the collage with. I have found that if you get glue on the page it cant be painted over something that I hadn't thought of before. This was the first page I did and with practice it came out smoother. I used an old credit card and a roller to get the wrinkles out.

My first spread is a collage of photos taken in my garden. Behind the door you will find me in the garden with Bertha the lady scarecrow I made and I greet you on a lovely summers day with a glass of wine. Looking through the photos of myself and husband in the garden we always seem to have a glass in our hands. Just as well it isnt always sunny and warm here in the UK

The second spread is a Victorian Garden. I have hand embroidered the lady and some of the flowers onto a cotton that doesn't fray very much before I cut the embroidery out I lightly glued around the figures and let it dry. I have also dyed some lace.

This is the last spread I did. Its painted stamped collaged with paper napkin poppys and worked into with paintstik and other crayons. The lady was put into photo editing and turned into an oil painting this sounds as though Im good at photos but Im not I just played around with this its just a matter of clicking and using a slider. I havent yet worked out how to do layering its probably quite simple if someone shows you how to do it

I use a free programme called paint.net just enter this into search and its a free download. I have

now posted my book onto the next person.