My Altered Book Project

For some time now I have been thinking of altering a book.  I have scoured the internet looking at altered art projects and Altered Books and doing so has made me all the more determined to get started sooner rather than later..  I first needed to finish my Christmas cards and a couple of other things so I could pack up all the Christmas paper, cards and other festive bits from my workspace. I don't have a lot of room to be creative in and for this reason I favour digi scrapping over paper scrapping but I do love paper and I have found there is a lot of relaxation in sitting painting, gluing, stamping and so forth.

There are no real rules in altering a book, only guidelines and helpful hints from those who have indulged in the Altered Book process.  I don't want my book to fall apart so I have followed the advice I have discovered online and purchased a book with its pages stitched rather than  pages glued together.




I was looking for a book that appealed to me but the ones that appealed were glued and some of the most appealing brought out my feelings of guilt - I was going to rip and tear pages and these books didn't deserve this treatment so they went back on the bookshelf to wait for someone to love them.  The right book was found today in a thrift shop. The text was written in 1850 and has been republished by a company who delight in bombarding their subscribers with sweepstakes opportunities and other free book offers.  The book has a few illustration it and I won't be discarding them from the book and I will find some method of honouring the author even though he has long departed from this world. For all I know he could be hovering around watching me.

So, why blog about my Altered Book?
I thought it might be interesting to record the process from beginning to end and share the journey.  So come along for the ride - my artistic skills are not great so expect some of the journey to be bumpy, some of it to be funny, and no doubt once I get some glue on my fingers pretty damn messy.  The camera is ready, my book is waiting....