Altered Books

What got me interested in bookbinding in the first place was altered books.  I've been dabbling in this medium for several years now.  I started creating altered books and using them much like visual journals to express feelings and emotions and then got caught up in the various techniques for altering the books themselves.

Once again, it wasn't easy to find classes in my town so I used the Internet as my source of information and instructions.  Luckily, there are several Yahoo Groups that focus on this medium and they were and are a big help to me.  I did eventually find a group of like minded individuals in my home town but I came in at the end of a Round Robin and the group folded the next year.  It was fun while it lasted, though.

Here are some pictures of an early altered child's book.  I used this one to express how I feel when I'm seriously depressed.  I was lucky enough to find magazine images that worked with my poetry and I used distressing techniques on the pages to make them seem dark.  I used a ransom font to add to this effect.

I used white acrylic on the front cover and then stamped the title, "It's been a bad day" using Stazon ink.  I used ink to darken and distress the cover.

I used the Lumiere acrylic paints on the backgrounds and then darkened them with black ink that pounced on top.  I tore the edges of the pages and used ink to make them look like they'd been burned.

This is definitely one of my darker books but I don't think that all work needs to be light and positive.  I was actually quite pleased with the way that this book came together.