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Ruth's book cover
Altered Books – A Glimpse Inside

Altered Books – A Glimpse Inside

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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.

Altered book cover with mixed media birds nest.

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.

Altered book with page of painted magpie by Paula Rindal

Here’s a page inside Paula’s book with a painting of a magpie.

Altered book with antique photo of building with men in front by Paula Rindal.

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.

Altered book with two painted landscapes, old book page and fabric strip.

These are some of the mini landscapes that Paula painted.

Altered book with antique photo of men playing cards on porch and stitched leaves.

And another of Paula’s photos with stitched leaves.

Sally's book cover

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.

Altered book with antique flower end paper and music paper.

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.

Altered book with mix of papers including old typing paper and dyed paper towel.

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.

Altered book with original end pages kept in place of map of forest regions in the US.

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.

Altered book with screen printed paper on left and word printed fabric on right by Ruth Lane

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.

Altered book with painted book page and handmade paper by Ruth Lane

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.

Altered book with pinecone original book page and antique ledger paper.

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.

Altered book with collaged papers on left and painted handmade paper on right by Ruth Lane

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!

Stack of signatures with holes made for binding.
Annual Art Retreat 2025

Annual Art Retreat 2025

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My local art group had our annual retreat and enjoyed a wonderful weekend. One of our members that had moved to Wisconsin over three years ago came this year so it made the retreat extra special. Mainly, we worked on our altered book journals.

Inside Kiwanis Lodge on Little Bitterroot Lake in Marion, Montana

Luckily, we have a beautiful place to go each year, the Kiwanis Lodge at Little Bitterroot Lake in Marion, Montana.

Landscape of Little Bitterroot Lake with pine trees, the lake and distant mountains.

We had gorgeous weather this year and it wasn’t smoky yet. The following week was really smoky from wildfires in the northwest US and Canada.

Inside the lodge with Paula, Deb and Sally.

We worked on our altered books and Paula (left) showed us how to do a traditional book binding. There were a lot of steps and I had never done a book binding like this. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just a bit fiddly. For anyone who is an expert at this process, please ignore the fact that I don’t know all the correct terms for each of the processes/parts of the binding.

We used the cover of our books and took all the “guts” out. We had to make signatures to fit the size of the book out of the pages that we had already made. You mark the signatures and put holes to stitch through. You also need a piece of fabric with a marked piece of cardstock matching the signature holes. The cardstock is glued to the fabric with PVA glue.

This is my book, the photo on the left is that stack of five signatures (groups of pages) that have their holes punched. The middle photo shows the signatures and the top header thingee (forgotten the name but it’s at the top left of the signature pile) and my tools. The right photo shows my marked cardstock glued to the fabric where the signatures will be attached.

Stitched signatures being attached to book cover.

I got so involved with the process that I forgot to take photos of all the steps. This is Paula’s book after she has her signatures stitched in place and one side is glued down to the cover. The striped pieces are her headers.

Booking binding in process

Here’s a photo of Louise’s book in progress.

Once you have the signatures glued down to the covers, you need to use “end papers” to cover the inside of the book cover. Paula used different pieces of fabric and then used a portrait she had drawn/painted as the end cover on the front inside cover.

Paula's book cover

Here’s Paula’s front cover after she got it all together. I am not sure if she is adding more to the cover or not.

Sally's book cover

This is Sally’s book, she hasn’t glued down the cover piece yet but thinks she will be using various eco printed pieces to fill her book. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of Louise’s book as she was still working on the inner pages.

Ruth's book cover

And here’s my book. I was thinking about doing some surface embroidery on the leaves and pine cones but I would have to put holes through the cover. This would detract from my inside end paper. So I haven’t quite decided yet. Because this post would be a bit long, I will show you the insides of the books on my next post. It was really satisfying to get this book put together after working on various aspects of it for a year.

Sunset through the trees on Little Bitterroot Lake

And my annual sunset photo.