Crafty Goodness

I meant to write a post yesterday to tell you about my crafty class but I got home a bit late and to be honest, I didn’t feel like sitting at the computer. What I wanted to do was keep crafting! I didn’t because I have very busy days ahead of me at work and needed to rest but my mind was totally on creating.

So, what class did I take? I’ve signed up for an altered book class at a local museum. I have a couple of more sessions and I’m so excited. Normally, I’m making books and not tearing them apart but I’ve been wanting to complete an entire altered book. I’ve dabbled a bit in this but I think this class will give me the inspiration to follow through with a project.

I know a lot of people may be slightly horrified at the thought of tearing apart a book but I’ve said this before, I used to be one of those people. I couldn’t imagine even folding a corner to hold my reading place (something I still can’t do – ha) but I really like the idea of giving forgotten or broken books a chance at being a work of art, of being re-used as a journal, or just not going to a dumpster.

brownbookSo back to my class, last night was about cutting out pages and gluing pages. The goal is to make the book pages sturdy so they can hold attachments, like pockets or beads. I started my project with a flea market find that my father-in-law gave me. It’s a vintage German book (hey, here I am even incorporating German Literature Month in my crafty life) which is in pretty good shape.  I don’t like the color of the book covers so I’m sure I’ll be doing something to them.

I started off by adding some gesso and paint to the pages. I am using a new gesso which I’m finding a bit grainier than the one I typically use and with the book pages already being old I wasn’t too sure if I liked where I was going with this.  But after adding some rub-ons and stenciling some stamps, I applied some gloss and that seemed to help make the pages a bit smooth. I still need to add some text but I like that you can still see the original text through the paint.

goldpageFor the next set of pages I used a napkin as the background. I’ll have to show those in another post. Had a bit of a tear at the bottom but that’s ok. Normally when I’m bookbinding this definitely not be a good thing but in altered arts mistakes actually can be a great thing. It’s a chance to incorporate another element or maybe create something entirely different.

I hope I get a chance to work a bit more on my book this weekend because I don’t want to waste all of the class time on just waiting for paint and glue to dry. I would like to have several more pages and backgrounds done.  Anyway, I’ll keep you posted!

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