Altered Books – A Glimpse Inside
In my last post, I showed you how we finished up the binding on our altered books. I didn’t manage to get photos of Louise’s book as she was still working on adding to her inner pages. Sorry, Louise. Here are the inside photos of the rest of the books.
This first book is Paula’s and this is the back cover. This is her bird’s nest; part of her theme was birds. She had picked several words to base her pages on when she was creating the book.
Here’s a page inside Paula’s book with a painting of a magpie.
Paula has a bunch of antique photos that she used throughout the book. She also has some wonderful antique papers which you will see in all of our books as she is so generous.
These are some of the mini landscapes that Paula painted.
And another of Paula’s photos with stitched leaves.
Now on to Sally’s book. This is her cover and Sally is planning on adding to her inside pages but hasn’t completed that yet.
Here’s Sally’s end paper on the left. Perhaps you can see the dark brown fabric where she stitched her signatures? The first page is from some old music sheets that Paula gave us.
Sally has a mix of different kind of papers in her signatures just waiting for her addition of eco printed paper and fabric.
Here are a couple of other examples of the type of paper that Sally used in her book signatures.
This is the inside cover of my book. I didn’t want to take out this lovely map from the original end papers. So I left it the way it was. I then glued my end paper to cover where the signature had been glued in on the back side of the right page shown here. The map is what is stopping me from putting holes in the front cover to stitch some embroidery.
Here is the end paper on the left that covers the glued binding. This piece of paper was screen printed with the deconstructed screening technique. It was my original inspiration for the color scheme for the book. You will have seen the fabric on the right if you read my prior post about how we printed the “backwards” writing.
Here’s another one of my pages. The addition of extra paper in the signatures splits up some of the page spreads that I made but to me it adds some interest. I am thinking about adding some poems and quotes about trees on some of the blank pages.
This page spread in my book shows the back side of one of the book pages that I didn’t change and an old ledger paper from Paula. If you didn’t see all my page spreads that I created for this book, you can see them here and here. Most of them made the cut for the final book layout.
I really enjoyed creating this book and I’m looking forward to the project that we will work on in the coming year with my art group. We don’t have a plan as of yet but I’m sure we will come up with something!















6 thoughts on “Altered Books – A Glimpse Inside”
Very interesting pages! Why are old ledger pages so interesting I wonder – is it because it feels like a connection to the past through the handwriting? Paula’s mini landscapes are lovely.
So – you haven’t decided how to finish your cover yet?
Thanks, I agree that old ledgers are interesting. I do love the handwriting and figuring out the differences that you see between now and then. I have not decided what to do with the cover yet. It will stay as is for the moment .
Those books look amazing. I love how they look so vintage and yet have had a modern hand to them, it makes them harder to pinpoint. The textures are so yummy.
Looking forward to seeing how you’ll finish your book! Although… finishing really isn’t the point, is it? Once you’re done, what do you do with it, just keep it in a shelf?
Thanks Leonor, I do love the mix of vintage and our own interpretations now. The book may be finished or may have more added, not sure which. And yes, I have a shelf full of art books but need a better way to display them.
I’m glad that you kept the map Ruth. I love maps and can spend ages just looking and exploring.
You are gradually altering my “what’s the point” attitude to altered books. In fact your book on trees reminds me so much of a project which I did back in junior school when we were each given a specific tree to study and research. Mine was the Elm and I wish that I still had my resulting project notes, because we don’t have the trees any more. They all succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease in the 1960s to 1980s.
I did suggest that you could perhaps do a paper dust cover for your book. It does occur to me that you could instead make a felted one.
Ann
Thanks Ann, the map definitely needed to stay 😉 It’s too bad that you don’t have your research on the Elm, that would have been nice to have. And I’m sorry to hear about the loss of the elms.
I am still pondering the dust cover idea. And it did make me think that I could do a fabric or felt cover too. Still not sure what or if I am going to do to the book cover.