altered books

Back in October I saw a notice for a class for learning altered book techniques and decided to go.  An altered book is where one takes an old book of some sort and then alters the interior pages by cutting, folding, drawing on, decorating or whatever.  At its most basic, it's a cut and paste kind of job -- my kind of skill level!  Once one attends the 2 sessions of the class, one is invited to attend the free monthly gathering of the Altered Book Consortium (ABC Club) and participate in the activities (some artistic technique) and participating in one of the round robin altered book swaps.

For the round robin swaps, each participant supplies a book to be altered and chooses a theme for their book.  Then each participant takes home someone else's book and works on it and brings it back to the meeting the next month, for it to go home with the next person.  At the end, each person's book has 2-page spreads that have been created by each person in the swap.

The book I brought home this past month has the theme "Life is Good".  For my spread I decorated 6 recycled junk mail return envelopes, labeled each one with an idea for a list of "blessings", and attached three to each page, overlapping.  I had covered the pages of the book by attaching decorative papers by punching holes in each corner of the pages and tying them to the original papers with yarn.

The "themes" that I put on the envelopes were "Sparkling Moments", Great Expectations", "Where the Secrets Live", Metamorphosis", "The Loveliest of Details", and "Everyday Wonder".