Another Altered Book!

Apologies for the delay in posting. I have a myriad of words due for this week and it has been difficult to find time for blogging. Oh essay season, you are delightful...

I made this altered book for my very good friend Beth. Our little posse decided to do a crafy kris kindle at Christmas time as we are all terribly impoverished! Ah... The toils of student/graduate life! I decided to make an altered book because I really enjoyed making the last one and think they look quite lovely!

The green backing paper, dried flowers and the paper butterflies are from Daintree Paper, a beautiful paper shop on Camden Street in Dublin. The owl is of course from the painting by Albrecht Durer and I just printed it out onto a piece of card.

I think that the real benefit of altered books is that they look very impressive and are such little effort to make. They can be made very quickly and provide an excellent blank canvas on which you can get really creative! If you want to make one yourself, I have written instructions here.

Thanks to Beth for taking the photos for me. You are a star!

I hope you all have a lovely week.

Brid x

An Attempt at Altered Books.

After reading a bit about Altered Books, I decided to attempt one myself. I decided to go for a forest theme. It's very easy to make and it doesn't take too long. The folding and the cutting do get a little bit tedious but if you have cups of tea and good music, it's not too bad!

Instructions

1. Pick an old hardcover book that you have no interest in. Charity shops and Second-hand Bookshops are a great place to find cheap, hardcover books.

2. Choose some nice paper to stick on the inside cover. Cut it to the correct size, making sure it's not crooked. A guillotine is the best thing for this.

3. Fold all of the pages of the book in half.

4. Cut out indentations for your creatures to live in. I cut a semi circle out of a few pages to create the grooves that I would then stick animals in. I used a nail scissors to do this. It takes a little bit of time to make sure that all the semi circles are the same.

5. Cut out pictures of animals from an old book. I had an old nature book that I used for my animal images. You could also print pictures of the internet or use another source. Then stick the animals in the grooves you have already cut.

6. Draw and cut some green leaves from paper and stick them in between your pages.

Ways to display it:

1. Put a little hook on the back of it and hang it on the wall.

2. Prop it up on a shelf against the wall.

If you do try one, send me a link to the photo. I would love to see it!

Thanks to Conor Barry for the photos. They are quite lovely. Conor is an awesome writer for the "University Observer" and you can see his writing here. It will make you chortle

Happy Crafting.

B x