Altered Book Class

Well, I went to a altered book class yesterday at a local craft store - Anthology on State Street. The store newly opened this past spring and they have a lot of classes to offer. I had never taken or done an altered book before, so figured I would give it a try. Laurie the owner was very helpful and showed me quite a few projects that she had done in the past. I have taken a few photos of my first try. She gave me an old handyman book. She said the trick to picking the right book, is pick one with a great woven spine. It is also nice to pick one with a hard cover. Don't pick a book that has been glued on the spine, as it will fall apart and breakdown once you start to alter it. There are a few tricks as to the pages.

1. You can leave them in and remove all of the page (leaving an 1 inch border near the binding). Leaving this piece, you can then insert pages between a couple of remaining pages.

2. The second option is leaving the page in whole. (leaving 2 consecutive pages in the book so you can glue them together for stability. You will need a minimum of 2 pages together to have enough stability to alter them. Remember you will be adhering additional stuff to them and also painting or water coloring them.

3. The third option is removing the whole page from the book altogether. When removing pages, you need to take a particular page in mind, pull on it slightly so it moves away from the binding. You will notice that pages are connected together at the binding and they will need to be removed with one another. If you would just remove the one page, you then weaken the remaining page(s) that it was initially connected to. Don't be afraid to tear pages out. Most times you will take our at least 33% of a complete book to allow yourself enough room for your additional art to be added.

She advised to take out pages first, keeping in mind that you will need at least 2 pages to adhere to one another along the way. Next, she starts to fold pages and half tear them to make pockets for storing art. I have a few photos here that show the original book, and then a few photos of the folded pages along the way.

On your first book, start with the first 1/3 of the book, so you don't feel overwhelmed. Also, she has found that acrylic paints tend to be sticky (beautiful, but sticky) and not a good use in a book that is closed for periods of time. She had a book using the acrylic paints and the pages were definitely sticking together. Some of the paints were even adhering together and mixing on the 2 consecutive pages. When you fold pages, make sure to fold the pages as twos (keeping your glued "new pages" together). After/before folding, you can paint the pages. Before you paint pages, feel free to add texture to the pages by adhering more paper, tissue paper, magazine pieces, newspaper that has been crinkled - then paint over the top. If you want to paint or glue more than one set of pages at a time, use wax paper between them to keep them fresh and from blending together.

I will be doing some pockets and some pop ups on my first book to get some practice. I will go into pop-ups a little more in depth when I have photos to share. I will also try a circular pocket tab with a window too.

Anytime you want to sew anything in your book, make sure you sew the pages BEFORE you put them into the book. This makes the process much easier. And when you are thinking of using brads, you will need to plan your pages before gluing the pages together, so you can hide the backs of brads between the glued pages.

Don't be shy about trying new things with your new book. She said that the use of many different things works; stickers, magazine clippings, photos, envelopes, tags, maps, stamps, postage stamps, papers items from travels, buttons, keys, paper clips, brads, newspaper clippings, book clippings, poems, dried flowers, etc.

There are a few necessities before starting an altered book project. Here's a short list to start:

Colors, brushes, jar of water, paper towels, book to alter (binders will work too), UHU Glue stick (the best for collaging and altered books- this does not make you paper so crinkled and wet looking, and it only takes a little to get the job done), any art pieces you want to adhere to pages, permanent double sided tape to adhere your art to the pages, and some art supply store adhesive made by Golden. You will want to get the Gel Medium stuff (on the white jar it states that it is for collaging).

If you can find it in your local library, a great source of altered book help is from an author named Claudine Hellmuth. She's great at explaining the process and has some great examples of pages for you to see.