Summer ~ Page 13 :: Altered Book :: As the Earth Turns

Ingredients:

crayons, Golden Heavy Gel Gloss, Liquitex Glass Beads medium, fancy fibers, brown acrylic paints, and Sennelier oil pastels

Lessons Learned:

1) I should bring an altered book with me when I visit my parents' house. That way, if I'm feeling inspired and can manage it, I can work on my art while I'm there.
2) It might be a good idea to create a little traveling art case with a few art essentials for creative emergencies while I'm away from home, like when I'm lying awake at night and artsy ideas are swimming through my brain.

Process:

I have already marked the pages in this chapter that have words and phrases for potential poetry, so when I needed pages for the sunflower petals, I cut out ones that hadn't been marked. I used some crayons, which were not even labeled "crayons" but were called "plastic art colors" that I found lying around my parents' house and used the shades of yellow and orange to color the torn out book pages. Then I cut petals from the pages . . . lots of petals. I changed the way I cut them to create petals with the text going in two different directions.

I colored the background pages with green crayons. I made the borders on the outside edges by doing a rubbing from the top of a huge cookie tin that my dad bought at Costco. Of course, I had to eat a few cookies along the way to fortify the creative process.

I used a glue stick to glue the petals on the pages. I originally made the flower centers by coloring text pages brown, cutting them in strips, and then weaving them together. I cut out circles from this paper weaving and glued them on the center of the flowers. But a couple days later, when I got back home, I found I didn't like them very much. The page looked too flat. So I tore the centers off the page and tried something else.

I wanted that dark textured center that you see in sunflowers, so I cut some circles from text paper using deckle edged scissors. I mixed up a combination of heavy gel gloss, glass beads medium, and a couple shades of brown, ocher, and black acrylic paints until it was a dark, gloppy pile. I painted this mixture onto the paper circles. I took the flat end of a dowel and kind of "pounced" it in the paint to enhance the texture of the medium. I let these circles dry overnight.

The next morning, I looked at the circles again, and was a bit disappointed. The brown was too . . . brown. The color just didn't have enough depth, and sad to say, (and hopefully you won't be offended) but my flower centers looked too much like poop. However, I found a way to make the flower centers look better. I used some yellow and gold shades of oil pastels and rubbed them lightly over the paint. Then I used my finger and smeared the color around so it smooshed into the crevices and created highlights over the brown. I love the way it looks now.

The last thing I did was to couch the furry yarn onto the top and bottom of the pages.

Reflections:

I went with my husband and two children to my parents' house for Christmas and took As the Earth Turns and my new board book, Astronomer's Apothecary, so they could see the latest pages. On my second day there, I found a little collection of art supplies my father had discovered in a box in his garage. There were some ancient looking ChartPak markers, colored pencils, and the "plastic art colors" which looked suspiciously like generic crayons. I had been toying with the idea of including sunflowers in my "Summer "chapter but hadn't exactly come up with a way to use them. As I looked at these old art supplies left over from my childhood, I suddenly felt inspired.

I grabbed the crayons, found a pair of scissors and a glue stick, got my book, and headed for an unoccupied table. I started coloring and cutting and gluing. My two nieces sat beside me and started coloring too. My sister, mother, and brother-in-law pulled out the Scrabble board and started a game. When I complained about the lack of light on that gloomy gray afternoon, another sister found a floor lamp in back room and plugged it in beside me.

The next day, I went to a little strip mall down the road from my parents' house. I am embarrassed to say that had never noticed that there was a yarn shop, a bead store, a used bookstore, and a Beverly's Craft and Fabric store there! I found the yarn that I used at the bottom of the page and some lovely buttons that I ended up not using. So not only did I get to spend the holidays with my whole family, but I got to do art and shop too. It can't get much better than that!!

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