My Altered Book - playing catch up ...

 

 I'm altering a book following the on line lessons

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

Altered Book Lover

If you click on the photo above it should take you to

the Syllabus page on Elizabeth's blog.

I've now completed lesson 4, but my earlier

progress can be found on my blog here.

 

Lesson 4

This lesson was all about different glues and gesso.

If you're a fan of the sticky stuff do go and take a look at

Elizabeth's extensive blog post on this topic. 

We had to stick two pages together using different types of glue,
then make tags to record our observations.

Here goes then:

(Well, that was blogging fun - not!  Trying to line all these photos up!
Sorry if they are appearing all over the place)


Each medium gave good adhesion, sticking two pages
of the book together really well.
The only real problem was all the wrinkles and creases
which each of the different glues gave to some degree.
I did these pages a few weeks ago and at the time my preferred
glue (as documented on the tags) was the Power Pritt Stick.
Looking at them again now, there really isn't much difference in 
any of them - and if anything, the Gesso may even be the best,
although at the time I recorded it as the second worse!
Note to self then:  Use whatever you have to hand, it all works!


The second part of the lesson concentrated on Gesso.


These words are from Elizabeth -

"Gesso is a chalk-like substance used by many altered artists. Gesso adds tooth to any page, fabric, or substrate. It allows any page or substrate to accept paint without the paint sinking into the page. It can be used to strengthen thin pages or pages you want to add heavy embellishments to. It can be used to texture a page. You can think of it as a primer." 

We had to create a two page spread both

covering the pages with Gesso and using Gesso as a glue.

 

I had never before thought of Gesso as a glue, but it works!

For the background, once the Gesso was dry, I used Distress Inks

and Pastels to add some colour.

I used Gesso to stick down the images and the words,

which are printed on thick card - oh and not forgetting the

scraps of sequin waste - they too were stuck down with it.

I finished decorating the facing page to the niche page too.

 

I rubber stamped various images onto tissue paper

and stuck them onto the page using Liquitex Matte Medium.

That's about it I think.

I see Elizabeth now has Lessons 5 and 6 on her blog

'Design Principles 1 and 2'

...gulp... hope I'm up to it!

If you're still here - thanks for looking :)