It's Christmastime!  Here's my newest creation which I used a book for a base in which I glued the pages together.  How about that clock face?  It's backed with chipboard and it stands up by itself.  

I used the Nestabilities "gears" to cut out the gears from brown cardstock.  The house I made out of cardstock and glued burlap to the roof.  I think it makes it look like a thatch roof.  The bottle brush tree was green so I dunked it in Clorox and dyed it out white.  Now let's talk about the picture.  It's a picture from 1911.  I think they are sisters?  I backed the clear flat backed marbles with glitter copper colored paper and glued them down with clear calking hit with glitter.  That calking is cheap and works great to glue stuff together and really looks like snow. 

Merry Christmas!

Winter Wonderland Book......

He's ready for the snow.........are you?

The base of this piece is a book!  I painted an old hard covered book light blue, glued the pages together and printed out a title for the spine and glued it on.  The snowman's face has been hand sculpted out of paperclay and painted.  I made the hat and scarf from a scrap of felt.

As I was glueing the pages together I tucked glittery snowflakes between the pages here and there to peek out.   I secured a hanger on the back and he's ready to hang on the wall!

An American in Paris Altered Book

This is an altered book I've been working on for a week now. There are all kinds of goodies tucked into it, protruding out from the edges. I wanted it to have the feel of a carelessly thrown together scrapbook of an American traveling in Paris in the 1920s. I used a lot of vintage scrapbook papers from the Tim Holtz collection. I also incorporated a few of my own digital collages and I threw in some textiles just for fun.Each individual page is glued together to the one in front and back of it with the papers secured between them so the book lies flat. You could hang it or just leave it open on a table.
How cool would it be to go back in time to the 1920s and really be that "American in Paris"?This book will be posted on Ebay this weekend so check back if you're interested in it for the link!

The Secret Garden

With all of the seed catalogues I've been getting the past two months, I've been dreaming about flower and veggie gardening. One of my favorite children's books is The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett. Inspired by the book I created this altered book which can be hung on the wall.
The image of the girl is public domain which I colorized as well the door image. I cut a niche in the book about 4.5 by 5 inches and started to build my secret garden.

The leaves and branch are hand cut from book text painted with twinkling H2O paints then embellished with glitter.

I love the little fox looking up at her. There was a brief mention of a fox in The Secret Garden book.Here it is hanging on the wall......it's not crooked, my camera angle was crooked or should I say, I was crooked when I took the picture.
The book I altered was a Readers Digest condensed book. They work great because they are thick and you can get a nice deep niche.

Well, I'm off to alter another book!