My altered tree book is moving along slowly. I made a few more pages and used some of my scraps from the word printing experiment.

I try to keep some page spreads that already have gesso on them so that I can sit down anytime to create a few collaged spreads. The one on the middle left is gessoed with clear gesso that Paula uses. I just have the white gesso so most of my pages will be covered first with that.

I then added some walnut ink to tone down the whiteness of the page. I decided to add walnut ink to the edges of one of my miniature paintings too. It definitely helps to tone down the white edges for this project.

Then I have a bag full of scraps and papers in my chosen colorway. It’s fun putting the mark making and other papers together.

The eco printed leaf is one that Paula did and gave to me.

I was much happier with the miniature landscape once the edge was no longer white. The words are a poem about trees.

The old “papers” are such a great addition to the book.

I found this “tree” on the right that I had made but not used in a different collage. It’s made from printed black paper. I finally used my original color inspiration in this spread.

Here’s another one with the screen printed inspiration paper and some mark making from the word experiments.

I have to figure out how I am going to make my signatures. For those of you who don’t make books, a signature is a group of papers that are stitched into the binding in one “piece”. I don’t think I will have all the pages filled. I will leave a bunch of blank pages so that I can draw or write or make marks in the book later. I am also planning on adding some fabric pages into the book. Then those can be stitched when inspiration strikes.