Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Hand-Crafted Book & Altered Book Cover

I enjoy mixed media and paper crafts, so I would like to share some of my favorite projects. Here are two: an altered book and hand-crafted book made from items I have around the house.

Altered book. This altered book was designed to be a scrapbook for my childhood pictures and memories. I have embraced using recycled materials and miscellaneous ephemera instead of store-bought scrapbooking materials (mostly). I took a large hard-cover book, appropriately I used one titled, "The Giant Book of Crafts." I painted over the cover with craft paint, and blended in some gold metallic craft paint. I added a curtain tie-back in a shimmery fabric to the front book cover, and added some fabric ribbon trim on top of the tie-back. I glued both of these with spray adhesive fabric glue. I found this old ratty Helen Keller book that was falling apart and so I used the Helen Keller cover to add embellishment to my altered book cover. I admit that I felt drawn to the Helen Keller cover, not only because it was appropriately titled, "The Story of my Life," but also because I always felt like I lived in my own little world as a kid. There is some irony there that makes me laugh. Anyway, given my status as a self-proclaimed bibliophile - using the altered book for a scrapbook just seemed right.


Hand Crafted Book. This book has plain white paper (no lines) on the inside. I used a cereal box for the front and back cover and covered them with floral scrapbook paper. I punched three holes through the covers and all the paper and tied it together with ribbons. Easy Peasy.