Annies Crazy World

Probably influenced by having done a jigsaw puzzle, that a friend lent me recently, I started thinking of how life is like a jigsaw puzzle, that nomatter how oddly shaped the pieces are they do fit and the puzzle needs them all, also thinking along the lines that each piece could represent a friend.

Time for some quick experiments…I have some jig saw puzzle pieces left over from an old puzzle I used for an altered book page…I put together a corner of the puzzle that was mostly sky background and cut out a post card sized piece, along the cut edges I glued the smaller pieces around the edges to the nearest full piece to make new edge pieces.

Next I glued a small section of joined pieces into my visual journal and gathered together a variety of pens and paint to see how they would mark the surface of the puzzle.

I was happy with how well the pens drew on the puzzle but when I came to the actual altered jig saw puzzle I opted to stick with black for the writing because at this size it is an easy jigsaw puzzle and if all the smaller words were done in different colours matching them up would make it even easier, making them all black means some thought has to be put into doing the puzzle.

I am not going to use this as my January post card but It will go in my altered book, making another interactive page which also links to “>other pages in the book…I put the puzzle on a cardboard back in a cellephane bag which slips into a pocket made from pages sewen together in the book.

When I showed the the toy page I pointed out that the page had split at the spine but as each page was glued to the ones either side it was secure and I liked the look for that page…But I didn’t want it on every page and worse still pages started to fall out…The Lesson Learnt Start with a book that has a Stitched spine…Umm what to do?…Abandon this one, learn the lesson from it and start again?…But I like the pages I have done and it is not in my nature to abandon and I think that my creativity is more stimulated when I have a problem to solve..Sooo I will finish it in a simplified version, that is I let several of the pages fall out, that is less pages to fix and less pages to decorate to finish the finish, to fix the remaining pages I glued organza ribbon down the join of each page.

As well as having less pages to simplify it I will make the pages less detailed than I otherwise would have, to start with I was going to do a page incorperating parts of a Jig Saw Puzzle, to keep it simple I have used just parts of the jigsaw puzzle, to make the page interactive I have placed a couple of pieces so that a bit is off the page and can be seen from other pages in the book, I have put one piece loose in one of the matchbox draws and there will be other pieces incorperated into or hidden in, the design of some of the other pages.

The toys on the pull out gave me the theme for this page, to which I initially stuck a few pictures of old toys…the next thing I did was paint over the white around the pictures and then I painted completely over the red car because it was to bright…I added more paint and stopped only when I realized that I was loosing the words on the page and I did want to keep some of them just visible in the background.

The next layer I added was the rocking horse, train, doll and ballerina which I found on a tissue box…I attached the ballerina with pieces of cardboard folded into a concertina so that they work like springs to make the ballerina dance above the page…I like how the horse and train blend in leaving the doll and the ballerina as focal points…The page was looking good but needed something else…

…I liked the books on the shelf beside the doll and decided to make a miniature book for the page…I used some of the page bits that I cut out to put in the drawers, I glued a piece of ribbon down the spine to reinforce it, I glued on front and back end pages which in turn were glued to the cover…To attach it, I cut 2 slots in the altered book page which the back cover of the mini book slip through.

I found the cover picture in a decoupage book that my mother found at an opp shop, it had some whole pages and a lot of part pages that had pictures cut form them as well as lots of already cut out pictures…while looking through what was there I found some tiny pictures that gave me an idea for how to make a second little book which turned out really cute, I stuck it to the bottom of the pull out so that it hides away between the pages until the tab is pulled…I also added a new tab which tells the reader to PULL on it…I like how interactive this page became.

You can see in the image below that I am having some trouble with the book coming breaking along the spine…I thought about trying to repair/patch it but after checking carefully that the pages were securely attached to the pages before and after so that they weren’t going to fall out I decided to leave it as it is because it adds to the old look of the page and sort of reminds the reader that it is a book.

When I started the embellishments for this altered book I was at a bit of a loss because I had no theme to get me going…then on a visit to the hardware shop we checked out the craft section where some little wooden house shapes appealed to me, I didn’t know what I would do with them but bought a packet just because I liked them…Later when I was working on the book and had painted the back page blue it seamed natural to use the houses in the Shadow Box…I started by painting the bottom part of the page green.

I cut away a little more of the pages to recess the house on the left so that it didn’t add extra thickness to the book…I painted the clouds and extra trees as a background and made the tree from a twig, cotton wool, glue and paint…and then I couldn’t help myself, houses have to have Windows and Door Knobs…and a few spots of paint would look like Flower Gardens…

At this point I added the flecs of red to the green at the bottom of both pages……and while I am at it I could paint the doors…and the roofs…

Before I painted all the houses I decided to leave one unpainted as a sample of the houses before I painted them…Thought I could keep the sample house in one of the Matchbox Drawers…Ummm mini shadow boxes and one thought led to another until both the matchbox drawers were mini scenes.

The unpainted house is in the Drawer below…I thought that the scene needed something else… a look through my crazy quilting charms produced the little white car which was a blue plastic button before I got to it with modeling paints…

From what I have seen altered books are over the top decorated and the plan was to use stamps and addresses from old envelopes to further embellish the left side page but for once in my life I decided to keep it simple…I love the way the Match Box cars interact with the Page and think that the space on the left gives the scene a peaceful country feel…

The altered book is to be a sampler so I want to use as many techniqes as I can in it…it has a pop up…the first image was before the final glaze and the second is the finished page.

And when I saw a picture using luggage tags in another book I thought umm I could do a pull out by attaching a card to a ribbon hidden between glued pages…the toy theme of the card I used has given me a general theme of old toys for that page and I have started a college for the page.

And on another page I have a window happening I have the frame cut with overhead projecter plastic for the window panes.

Altered Books do take take time to do the initial preparation, I found that I had to paste pages together to get the look I wanted and then the pages have to be painted and it takes time for the glue and paint to dry.

Now that most of the initial glueing and painting has been done I am delighted with how it is looking and it is ready for the fun part of embellishing the pages.

When I arrived at Jan’s she had already posted on her blog that I was coming for a creative play holiday.

Today working from the book ‘Altered books Workshop’ by Bev Brazelton we started making an altered book.

Thus far it has a match box set in as a draw and the hole cut for a shadow box.