A Little Red Book (part 4)

More pages from the little Red Book, and these are not even the last ones! This little book is a joy to work in. I like the small pages and the idea that you do not need much time to finish a page.

Normally I like to work with a cohesive spread, but in this book I have let go most of the 'rules' (as if there were any, überhaupt) and elements I like to work with.

The only thing that is consistent throughout the book are the use of words.But even the words on the pages don't make up the complete story.

Some stories have no start and no ending - you just plunge into it and follow along. Or better still: make up your own story and fill in the blanks with your own imagination.

A New Month, a Better Month?

September has not been the best month of the year for me. The weather was umbelievably wonderful and kind, and did its best to cheer me up. But most of the month felt like being in a storm of little and big life events. At one point my hubby and I looked at each other and asked the same question: What is going on?
Where is this all coming from?

Anyway, I had started the month with good intentions: Doing an online class from Shimelle.com and trying to make a small page about the things you can learn from that day. It seemed such a good way of getting myself in the habit of actually being creative every day. But boy, did I overestimate my ability.
What I learned most, is that I can't make a page every day! Sometimes I can make 3 pages on one day, but most of the time I had to push all the ideas forward (I did make notes though). And this means that up to today I have finished 17 pages, including the cover, which BTW might need some extra work, and makes me probably the slowest student of the class.
Is there an award for that?
Or maybe I should say that I just prolong the fun?

Here are the first two actual pages that I made. The other pages will get a place on this blog as well. Even though I did not follow all the prompts and ideas. In retrospect, I might have skipped all the prompts after the first week...

More pages in altered books

While browsing through the folders on my hard drive, I discovered some pictures of altered book pages which I never uploaded in this blog. So here are some of them.
This page was in a book about 'Elements' from a French member of our group. The text says:

FEEL
the currents
the warmth
your destiny
the strength
life


A year ago I took some photographs on a falconry demonstrations. Somehow I was attracted to this owl. For me they are the symbol of wisdom - something I would love to have more - but this fellow was also a very funny character. He was also so nice as to pose for me by turning his head and opening his beak.
Often this owl shows up on pages that I made for Round Robins. The picture above was for the book 'Bestiary' from an English member.
The owl in the picture below was used in an altered book for Maarit from Norway in a book about a little bear that starts his journey to find a place of his own.


It says: If you need advice, listen to the owl. A very wise piece of advice indeed, not just for little bears! So now and then we all need to find the wise one to guide us, don't we?

Silk Road, an altered book

The Silk Road, another book in the Journey RR, seems to be traveling with bad karma... It was sent to me from the UK but the book did not arrive - only to turn up back in the UK (luckily)!
At least, the second time that it was sent, it did arrive safely here in Holland.
It is a beautiful book about the Silk Road, the historical journey of the silk that came from China into Europe. The members of the group were asked to choose one of the cities on that journey and make a spread about it.

I choosed Xi'an as a spread and found images of the terracotta army that were found in Xi'an. My plan was to turn them into gel decals. This involves putting several layers of gel medium on top of the printed picture and wait for every layer to dry. So that took 2 days at least. Then you have to wet the paper at the back and start rolling with your finger, removing the paper from the back carefully.

For some reason, the black ink came also off - too bad, but it was not such a problem, because it makes the image even more translucent which can give beautiful effects. But after wetting and rubbing of the paper, the layers of gel medium turned milky! Never seen that before - especially as the gel had been transparant when all the layers had been added.
I waited for the images to completely dry, but the gel medium just did not change to transparant anymore....! Why???

So time to change plans. I printed the images again, this time on a paper with a slight canvas texture and cut out the figures as good as possible. The pages were painted red in the mean time (very Chinese...), chinese papers were collaged and the pictures were added .

The plan was to make some silk paper - but even that went wrong! I had been doing this previously, and had good results with it, but just not this time...
I could only used a small part of the silk paper, and glued that at the bottom of the spread. You cannot see it well on the picture - but in real life it adds texture and shine to the pages - very, very soft to touch!

Luckily the book is now on its way to Pascale in France. Just hope that the bad karma will get lost while traveling (instead of the book itself).
Funny, if you know that the Chinese tried to keep the secret of silk in their own country - but monks were able to smuggle some silk worms in a hollow walking stick back to Europe. Maybe that is were the bad karma came from? :-)

What to do with this book?

This book stood in a window of a secondhand bookshop in Den Bosch. I could not resist buying it.
This is the kind of book that was probably the pride and joy of the girl who received it. On the front, the coloured plate is glued into the bookboard. In the book several coloured plates are glued in the book.
We are so used to full coloured books and magazines, but years ago, this must have been a luxury!


The stories in the book seem so innocent, filled with morals and good endings - so far from what our daughters get to read in their magazines!
It is a pity that there is no date found, nowhere in the book. No referral to copyright. Guess no one was worrying about that, back then.

I bought it to alter, but on the other hand, I do like the covers so much - eventhough they are not that perfect. The pages are old, not that brittle, but for altering I need to remove some pages and glue some together.
This is the first time that I found it hard to get my hands at it and alter it. Can't even find a theme. Some suggestions???