Don’t Care for a Book? Alter It!
Yesterday, I ventured into the craft of altered books with baby steps: a workshop at a local stamp and craft store.
A longtime bibliophile at heart, I knew it would be tough for me to begin defacing a book, even if it were in the name of art, so I decided to rip that band aid off quickly. I started with a book by one of my favorite authors, though the book itself ended up being more attractive than it was interesting (the first 100 pages or so were great, but after that the narrative dissipated and the story became tedious).
Without further ado, here was my “blank” canvas, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco:
The first alteration we made as a class was a simple pocket, formed by folding a page in upon itself and fastening it to the page below it with brads:
We then used distress ink on the all pages in the spread and stamped a couple shipping tags to stuff inside the pocket. I thought the Mona Lisa fit quite well with the Italian art and pop culture posters featured throughout Queen Loana (which, as I say, made the book quite visually interesting):
Before finishing that spread (which I get the impression might never really be done, but certainly not within a two-hour class), we then moved on to cutting a window through a page:
Again, this was just a beginning. Fleshing out the spread, both above and below the window, is my continuing homework.
The last couple alterations we had time for were a pop-up element and text masking. For the pop up, we used an illustration from the Dover archives. Here it is in the process of popping up:
And here it is fully popped up:
I chose the religious imagery on the page (there’s plenty of that to choose from in Queen Loana) to go with the embellishment, but the text I found to mask was purely a happy coincidence:
In all, the class was quite inspiring. Though I began a little skeptically, due to all my book-loving baggage, I now think I’m hooked. This is going to be yet another expensive and time-consuming hobby, I can tell.
UPDATE: A more detailed how-to, inspired by this post, appears in Craft: 02.
Brian Sawyer 
Hanna 8:28 am on June 6, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Is this your first try? Looks great. I’m working on pop-ups right now too, yours is great inspiration!
Brian 8:32 am on June 6, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks, hanna. And yes, this is just the beginning of my first try.
I owe the entire idea of the pop-up, from the choice of illustration to the execution of the mechanism, to the instructor of the workshop, whose work I agree is quite inspiring.
Fadzilah 9:51 pm on June 6, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow, that’s very nice. And you did it with a book by Umberto Eco which makes it even better 🙂
Brian 7:25 am on June 7, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks, fadzilah. Is it better because you like Eco or because you have something against him? 🙂
Fadzilah 9:58 am on June 7, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I like his writings. But precisely because of that I don’t dare to create anything out of it, as I’m afraid of ruining it, so I’m living vicariously through what you did.
Brian 10:02 am on June 7, 2006 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Heh. I hear you, fadzilah. That was a tough hurdle for me to get over. Of course, there’s no way in hell I’d do this with any of my copies of The Name of the Rose!
Brian Sawyer 12:24 pm on January 12, 2007 Permalink | Log in to Reply
UPDATE: A more detailed how-to, inspired by this post, appears in Craft: 02.
bekaboo 1:12 am on February 19, 2007 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Loving it! I have exactly one altered book (done by me and a group of friends), and I treasure it. That said, I have 1000’s of other books. It was soooo difficult to make the first cut (I made a niche), but the book had a gorgeous cover, but was pure dreck (not to mention acidic and deteriorating fast) on the inside, so I actually think I improved it. 😉
doro 12:58 am on April 22, 2007 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I like seeing someone else in the beginning stages of a new endeavor. I think that altered books are like anything else
that we do in any of the crafts, they require support in the
form of purchases of this and that and often some of the
best things that I have found to use in my book was a simple
item I had used many times before- the matchbook.
I used the shape and design to hide notes in and to assist in making the page interactive…the cost: a few pieces of paper and pen…almost nothing…
I will admit other pages require special paper and so on..
I will watch to see if more of your work shows up on this site.
I like what I have seen so far…’ain’t it fun?’