Depending upon the artist working on them, some altered books have a recurring theme throughout. Other books can be completely all over the place. Most of my own books fall into the latter category, so I decided to do a book as a tribute to my favorite season: Autumn. Not surprisingly, my favorite color palette includes the fall colors, so this made my task very enjoyable! It’s fun to sit at my table surrounded by a bunch of colors and find different ways to use them.
I love sparkle! This spread was inspired by the rainy autumns of my youth in New Jersey. Although there were bright colors on the trees, the bark on the trees and the sky were so dark that the contrast was very striking. I tried to capture that in this spread and added in a lovely Emily Bronte quote, which I looked up online.
For this spread, I decided to do some page cutouts. I stamped and embossed some leaves right on the pages and trimmed around them to create a silhouette against the pages behind my spread. I then used UTEE to create some glassy-looking leaves on random scraps and “mistakes” I had hanging around. Always save your mistakes, because they are nothing but accidents waiting for a new outfit.
“Autumn in NY” started out as an exercise in texture and layering. First, I gessoed the pages with a thick layer of white gesso and used my brush to spread the gesso around to create texture. Don’t be afraid to play! Glob on the paint and experiment: If you don’t like it, smooth it over and start again. When the gesso was dry, I applied layers of color with a dry brush, letting the paint dry between layers. On the last layer, I blotted the paint with a paper towel, further texturing the pages. A layer of dressmaker’s pattern paper stamped with leaves and a wash of glitter paint went down next.
Lastly, I got to play with my ribbon stash! This spread is pretty busy, starting with leaves stamped randomly on the pages in muted colors. The ribbons, confetti and silk leaves brighten things up a bit. Autumn is so chaotic with all of the colors and leaves falling haphazardly, so I tried to capture that feeling.
Choose a favorite season, item, feeling or even person and dedicate a book to it. Stretch your creativity and see how many ways you can represent that theme with color, stamps and other supplies you may not have used in a while.
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