Altered Book

Well I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was very hectic but fun. My husband and I went to 3 Thanksgivings! Lots of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pie! Yum...I am totally not complaining!

I just wanted to post a project that I have been working on for awhile that some of you might find interesting and fun! I have been working on an altered book. An altered book is basically any book that you take and alter the pages and cover through painting, drawing, collaging, stamping and cutting. It is so much fun and cheap! All you need is an old book and your normal art supplies and you ready to go!

My favorite books to use are old, hard-covered books because I think they give a lot more support than paperback books. I also like to use books that have some interesting pictures and text that I can allow to show through.

Usually I start by gluing pages together in sets of 10. I use matte medium and use an old piece of mat board to smooth the pages and make sure the matte medium in evenly distributed. This process can easily take a couple of hours so usually I put on some good music or a fun movie to keep myself occupied during this process.

Next I usually paint my pages or collage the pages with papers that I have made, fabric, interesting images I have found, etc.

Then it is time to start drawing/painting whatever you want to have in your book! You can pick a theme or just draw or paint what you want. Here are some images from my book. My book by the way is kind of random. I used a lot of different media and I did not really have a solid theme. My whole goal with this altered book was to experiment with different subject matter and to also play around with media.

Here is my cover:

The book was called: What's the Big Idea...I left the word Idea visible because I thought it went with the whole idea for my book.



Here are some of my images from the altered book. I usually like to do a spread, in which the artwork takes up both of the pages. I think it visually looks more interesting.