Don't you love it when that happens?
Ardara won a blank composition notebook in Sunday School, and she said "I want to make it an altered book like the ones we saw at the fair."
I LOVE ALTERED BOOKS! I always have wanted to do one. Now I have an excuse to spend lots of time on it because ... its for the children's education! Perfect!!! I encouraged Ardara to use her blank composition notebook as a journal and we went to Salvation Army in search of THE RIGHT KIND OF BOOK. We wanted hard bound books, stitch bound books, ones with heavy paper like watercolor paper. We found a COMPLETE SET OF W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM BOOKS. I don't know if you realize it, but I love Maugham. And for the most part this was a set of books by him that I have yet to read. It sickened me to buy them for the purpose of altering them. But at the same time, I thought, well, I can always check these books out from the library to read them, and perhaps his wonderful literary genius will show through on some of our pages and make them look very deep and intellectual. I am still dealing with it, but the damage is almost done. We already bought them, the kids already laid claim to which one they will alter, and yes, today was the point of no return. We gessoed and made backgrounds on the first pages. They are only the title pages, mind you, so technically I could still back out. But the decision is made. We will press on.
Anyway, I decided to record our progress through the books here instead of facebook because people are already sick of reading my whole life story day in and day out on facebook. And after all, I did create a blog to record our Home school adventures. So, here I am back at ChinnockNet after a long time away. Who missed me?
Okay here are the pictures of our very first pages......
This one is mine. I put contact paper shapes down first and then painted it. I let the paint run under the contact paper some, and then I blotted off the excess paint and let it dry before removing the contact paper shapes. Then I went over the white places with a lighter blue paint.
This one is Ardara's. She used White glue and paint mixed and then quick-dried it with a blow-dryer to try to get it all crackled. It didn't crackle very much, but we think we can do better next time with a thinner layer of glue. So, then she used my leftover contact paper shapes on top of that. Gorgeous!
This one is Huyler's. He used crumpled tissue paper on top of paint to create texture. Then he painted the tissue paper chartreuse and decided he hated how it looked so he peeled the tissue paper back off and the texture was still there, but nice and brown. Voila!
I was unsure that regular dish detergent would work for this rinse aid resist technique, so we gave it a try on a piece of gessoed cardboard. Paint, apply detergent to wet paint, allow to dry, then wipe/spray to rinse off the detergent and the paint underneath it. It worked, and Augie filled in the white areas with blue paint. We will use this technique for future pages. It will make a great bloody effect.
This is Augie's page. He covered it with lots of wet red and yellow acrylic paint and then squished clingwrap all over it and let it dry. Then peeled away the plastic wrap and there you have it. It looks sort of stained glassy to me.
So there they are. Our first pages. We got the ideas from a book by Claudine Hellmuth called "Collage Discovery Workshop: Beyond the Unexpected" which we checked out from the library.
I bet you can't wait to see what we do on top of the backgrounds!!!!
