Altered books
I am an artist. It is a weird thing to say out loud. When people ask, what do you do? and I say I am an artist, they eye me up and down and are not sure what to make of me. When I fill out a form that says "Occupation" I always fill it in with Artist. I don't make any money with my art, but it is what fills me up and keeps me going. Even now, when I don't have a lot of time to make anything, I have dreams about the project I have on the back burner. Right now I am working on an altered book about the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. What is an altered book? It is an old book that has been changed to be a work of art. Some approach altered books like extreme scrap booking, while for me it is a 3 dimensional canvas with endless opportunities. I'm going to try an blog some of the pages as I do them for this new book, but in the meantime, I will upload pictures from the last book I did based on the movie Practical Magic.
Comments
They're so beautiful!
I know women who also have done this kind of stuff --- One got 3 or 4 books with titles significant to the person she was making it for. When the books were stacked correctly on top of each other, and secured, she opened the cover of the top book, did "stuff" with the first few pages like you've done here --- included some things like ticket stubbs, photos, etc. --- and then a few pages down, cut a rectangular hole out of the rest of the "guts" of the books. Then she lined it with appropriate decorative paper to make it a PROPER box (even put sand and a couple of small sea shells on the very bottom, then put a immovable glass cover over it so you could see the sand & shells in the bottom) and then finished the pile of books off with a ribbon fastener. It was a gorgeous collector's box for trinkets, memorabilia, "stuff".
I know another woman who did the same sort of thing, but with a stack of old envelopes that looked like letters were inside them. She aged the envelopes and handstamped them from different countries.
This kind of stuff is BEAUTIFUL!
The pictures you included in this post are gorgeous, kRista! BEAUTIFUL!
How long have you been making these? am a big fan of assemblage... though my interests (not pursued in recent years) tend more toward sculpture than 2-D, or mainly 2-D...
MC2, I have no idea what to even say, I would not even know where to begin to put a price on these. I usually do them for love, not money:) I guess it would depend on what you wanted done. I use a lot of found objects, but I also burn through lots of printer ink ($$$) Because I have to get on the interwebs and find the perfect image, and sometimes after I print something out, it is not perfect anymore...The books and the postage would probably be the cheapest part! Wow, the thought of someone being willing to pay me to do what I love most makes me a little lightheaded...