I bought a light brown, leather-bound book and decided to make it completely different. I got this great idea from Marion Smith, over at Live with Prima. This was one of her live classes back in August of 2011!
I really enjoyed the process of "creating" and want to document it here for you. There are definitely things I learned along the way that I will mention, so you can learn and be prepared for, should you choose to do this project yourself.
Here are the pics of the original book, inside page and a random inner page. Originally, this book was a devotional. I got it at my local Goodwill Store for $1.50, and the whole time I altered it, I thanked God for inspiring someone to make such an awesome book.
Once you have acquired a good book to alter, you must coat it's cover with Golden Medium paste mixed with the acrylic paint of your choice. I chose burgundy! Here is what it looks like all painted. You must let it dry thoroughly before continuing, so a heat tool might come in handy.
Then you must alternate between tearing out a bunch of pages, right at the binding, about 1/4 inch worth, and leaving a bunch of pages in your book. The pages that you leave in the binding will be glued together to form a very thick buch of pages, but we will get there in a little bit.
First, make sure that in between each thick bunch of pages, there are equally thick areas of torn out spaces. These spaces are necessary so as you create your new, altered book, you will be able to add 3-D embellishments to those thick pages. This picture shows the width of pages to tear out. Don't worry if it looks sloppy-it's supposed to! That shabbiness is what will give your altered book character!
Next, you need to tear off about a 1/4 strip off of the long edges of the thick pages. This is so the pages will look more tattered and torn later, when we stain them.
Now comes the gluing part, and it is kind of messy. . . . actually VERY messy and my least favorite part of the job. To glue the clumps of pages together, I used a spray adhesive glue, because it is quicker than using a glue stick. But as you spray the glue in between your pages, it gets ALL over your work space! Yuck! It is hard to clean up later!!! You could use a regular glue stick to glue the thick pages together, but it will take a long time. The choice is yours!
Next, spray mist your pages to give them some color. And ink the edges of your pages with vintage photo Distressing ink.
The next phase of this massively long labor of love project is actually my favorite, because it is where you customize each page by adding page ellements and tags that you embellish. Here are a few of my inner pages:
On the small tags, I will write my families and friends names and birthdays and each page will be for one month out of the year. As my list of family/friends grows, I can simply add more tags to each pocket and this will be my virtual Birthday Calendar book. For the front cover, I traced a nice face plate and cut out the leather, leaving an opening to the inside cover. I then embellished the front of the book with Prima bling and flowers.
This book turned out gorgeous, in my typical shabby chic style, but it was very labor intensive (about 25 hours) and very messy (due to spray glue and all the inking and painting). I would recommend keeping your other working tools, such as paper trimmers and rulers, far from the glueing and inking station. If not, you will have to clean all that up at the end. You also will need to do a lot of handwashing throughout the process, so that you do not contaminate one group of pages with the colors of another grouping.
I am glad I did this project, but will probably not teach it as a group project due to it's labor intensive process and due to lack of space in my studio--I was so spread out with all my tools, I don't know that anyone else would have fit at my workstation!
If you'd like to see the "master" instructor demonstrate how to do this class on Ustream, log into http://www.livewithprima.com/ and look for the Marion Smith Altered Book under August 2011 archives. All the prima instructors are super friendly and mega talented. I've learned oodles from them!!
Happy Crafting and remember to Shine it Forward!
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