A Few More Pages

I had a request to post a few more pages in my altered book, My Love Affair With Van Gogh.

Three Muses Challenge-Oo La La ( anything French)

This weeks Three Muses Challenge is Ooo La La, anything with a french theme.  

This was hard in the fact that I had to choose which French themed  art of mine to show I decided to highlight a page in my altered book, My Love Affair with Van Gogh.

On this page spread I created pockets to hold small tags and cards. 

I call it Paris Dream.

Paper Dolls and ATC's

I have been having fun meeting like minded individuals /artists at Roses On My Table.
 I've joined a swap group of Artist Trading Cards and a group who swap and create Art Paper Dolls.
The Paper Doll group's theme for February is Steam Punk. I needed to do a little research to be sure I understood exactly what Steam Punk is.
Think Victorians and what their idea of Future Industrial tools and materials would be mixed together.
I call my Trio of Dolls the Time Keepers-Past, Present, Future.

I finished the House and Garden Altered Art Book yesterday. It feels good to have it completed.
Staying on the topic of what I've learned with this book , I also found  sometimes a page isn't coming together as you had imagined it would.
I began the page to the right wanting to use the door in my composition. I had applied pieces of masking tape to the page with the hopes that after painting they would give the impression of a stone wall.
Afterwards I wasn't happy with the muddiness of the colors and my chipboard butterfly wouldn't stay attached to the page.
After having a little hissy fit, I thought maybe if I painted the background white and removed the butterfly, I would open up a space for journaling.
The colors were not working and now the door didn't seem right.
I ripped everything off the page spread and started over. I applied a piece of red hand dyed and stamped paper, ruler stickers and put the postcard which is a closeup detail from one of my mixed media paintings. The green complimented the reds. I sewed on a button and attached a tag.
It felt right and I had added a place for writing.

Nearing the Completion of my House and Garden Altered Art Book

 Creating this altered art book has at times been frustrating but it also has taught me so much.
I think I'll be a better judge when it comes to inspecting a books binding, by knowing what pages has been sewn to the spine from those that have just been glued.
This one began to shed pages on its own after I had removed some as I started the art altering process.
Which in turn taught me what methods and materials worked best to repair the pages I had already completed.
I found that a wider sturdier piece of tape worked better than regular scotch tape. Scotch tape and the masking tapes I used spilt on me.
I found that strips of fabric proved to be useful ,not to mention adding another interest point when trying to keep the pages attached
 I ended up using small " pleather" necklace twine to sew through the cloth inner binding to the outside of the books spine as a method to hold the book together.
I have two page spreads left in this book. My plan is to finish it today because I am anxious to start working on the next book in my color series, My Little Book of Red.

My Book of Green

The title of this altered book is, My Book of Green.
My inspiration for each scene/page spread came from the names of the green paint swatches I had picked up at my local hardware store.   They have names like Far Away, St. Patrick, Leprechaun,  Summer Frolic, Putting Green, and Green Fees. There are names like Au Naturale , Clean Green, Early Spring and Marsh Green. I found greens named Pale Tide Pool and Essence of Spring Willow and one of the more popular color names Green Tea.
 I want to know who thinks up these names and how much do they get paid? If they have a job opening, I'd be happy to fill the position.
I'm thinking I need to start a series of color themed altered books.
I'll start collecting swatches of red paints and in honor of St.Valentine and February, I'll begin creating my second in the series, My Little Book of Red .
Can't wait to see what the reds are named.

My First Group ATC Swap- Cowboy Sweethearts

For the month of January the Artist Trading Card group over at Roses On My Table blog theme is Cowboy Sweethearts.
After deciding I wanted a vintage image of a cowgirl, I did a little investigation and found this lovely lady.
I created the background by fusing fabric to the trading card. I gave her a new bandanna using blue checked gingham ribbon and a glitzy earring as well.
I needed to make six cards to trade. And as I worked on each I was trying to come up with a title for the edition. (Every new art or group has its own language. I learned that making several of the same image is called an edition.)
   I thought about famous cowboy sweethearts like the TV program Gun Smoke's Miss Kitty, Dale Evans and Roy Rodger, Nell and Snidely Whiplash, oh wait... that cartoon was about the Canadian Mounties and Nell had a thing for Dudley's horse ...never mind.
  I had my radio playing in the background and a Beatles tune came on which got me to thinking about their song Rocky Raccoon and Rocky's girlfriend who called herself Lil but everyone knew her as Nancy.
Give yourself two Hurrahs if you were mentally singing the song at the end of the last sentence:)