My Altered Book - progress so far...

 I'm in the process of altering a book following the on-line

class being offered (very generously for free) by Elizabeth on her blog

Altered Book Lover.

I've so far completed up to lesson 3 so thought I'd better

start recording my progress.

Lesson One

Lesson one was finding the right sort of book to alter.

The only rule in this whole process was that the book

had to have a sewn spine.

Elizabeth gave very comprehensive instructions on how to 

find out whether the book had a sewn spine. 

With this information in mind I trawled several charity shops

trying to find the right sort of book.

One time my sister was with me and was completely

horrified when she saw what she thought was me

sniffing a book - LOL!!  My eyesight is terrible and I wear

glasses, but if I want to see the detail of something I have

to look over the top of my glasses and get up close and

personal with it!!!  So there was I with a book held up to my

face, almost touching my nose trying to see if it had a

sewn spine - over came my sister horrified asking if I

was sniffing the book - I'm still laughing now!!!

I think I convinced her of the truth and she's still speaking to me,

so all's well!

Sorry, I digressed ....   with a book in my possession -
'New Clear-Type Dictionary',

I could start the course, but then couldn't decide on a theme.

Eventually I settled on Dressmaking / Sewing - something

along those lines.

Lesson Two

This lesson was about prepping the book.
Towards the back of the book there will be a niche
and for lesson 2 we had to section off (with a rubber band) 
the pages where the niche would be cut into.
We then had to remove approximately one third of
the total pages in the book.
I used Elizabeth's second method for doing this. 

Lesson Three 

This lesson was split into three parts.

• Firstly, prepping the outside book cover.  

As my book is cloth bound, I decided to skip this step for the time being -I will decorate it in some way after the inside is finished.

• Secondly, prepping the inside end pages

  

Well, these photos look awful!
The pages do look better in reality.
I re-inforced them as necessary and then covered with
 dressmaking themed scrapbook paper.  

• The final part of this lesson was to create a niche.

I decided to put a little dress form/torso in my niche,

so created a few from air dried clay from moulds.

 

 

 This determined the depth the niche needed to be

and the required number of pages were then stuck together

at the edges with Gel Medium and clamped

(or in my case pegged) together whilst drying.

 

 

This had to be done twice and left overnight.

 

Then, the exciting bit, creating the niche!

 

  

This was actually a lot easier than I thought it'd be,

although I can't say my niche is perfect, but it'll do for me!

 

The niche had to be stuck with Gel Medium and clamped

to dry in the same way as before.

Once it was all dried and stuck together, the fun part came

- decorating and filling the niche!

For behind the niche, I stuck some old dressmaking pattern tissue,
and before gluing the niche block to the back cover,
I added some ribbon - I'm not sure what I'm going to do with
them exactly just yet, but they will give me the option to make
some kind of ribbon closure.  If I decide not to use them
 I can just cut them off.

I wanted some of the book text showing through, so
lightly painted the page with a buff coloured acrylic paint and gesso,
then overstamped with a dressmaking stamp
 (Tim Holtz 'Pattern Pieces' by Stampers Anonymous).
I added a label from an item of clothing too - just under the niche.

Here's a close up of the niche.

 
 Around the niche was smeared some Distress Ink.
The torso was sprayed with Crafty Notions
Creative Colour Spraypaque Fire Opal.


I like how this page has turned out.


I've started the next lesson - which explores different glues,
and deciding which ones we like best for our altered books -
but the trouble with glue is ... you have to wait for it to dry!


Thank you again Elizabeth for all your time and effort,
I'm looking forward to the next stage!