Altered Books

Samhain Altered Book (Autumn 2007)

not yet finished

Winter Solstice Altered Book  (Winter 2007)

A Birthday Altered Book

Our friend Tracy's birthday inspired me to make my second AB. I have a whole collection of textiles that I have gathered over the years. I made the cover from a velvet waistcoat.....beautifully tactile

I found an image to do with Cancer the Crab that I liked, surrounded it with stars, and made another little pocket, painted a tag black and wrote positive Cancerian traits on it in silver....loved using some cool silver fibre too....

I found an image of Diana...Moon Goddess, and made an altered playing card, then had great fun with painting tags and using lots of fibres....it all looked colourfully messy! Again wrote positive 'Moon' traits on the tabs.

Tracy loves dragonflies, so I had my first attempt at making a wire sculpture. I made a little pocket and wrote out what the dragonfly meant in the Medicine Cards and tucked it into the pocket. I also learned how to draw a very simple dragonfly outline....I am not a natural when it comes to drawing...

Tracy loves green violins....and is learning to play an electric violin, so this page was inspired by that.....

As the book was staying open due to bulk, I decided to try and use vintage buttons. I was not successful in my attempt to sew them on, so I tried glue....ordinary PVA white glue. I did not think they were going to work either, but put a very heavy weight on the buttons overnight, and they were wonderfully stuck next morning! Had punched a hole in the front and back covers.....heart in mouth as I did this, but it turned out ok, then used leather thong to tie the book closed.

40th Birthday Altered Book

The first altered book I made was a birthday 'card' for My Man's 40th birthday.

The cover I used was a paper bag from a shop that sells beautiful crystals, jewellery, ethnic clothes.... 

HIs main passion, (from 9years old), is astronomy so the first pages

were a reflection (no pun intended) of this. I pasted an image of the

moon, that he had photographed, in the star shaped cut out, with the

telescope focused towards it. The crystal is moonstone ~ his birthstone.

He adores typewriters and had quite a collection at the time

I made this.

Unusually for an astronomer, he also loves such things as tarot and

astronomy.

He is a fully licensed radio ham operator and a musician ~

playing guitar and harmonica.

He is so easy to love