An Altered Book:: The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay

The Breakdown :: Altered Book :: The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay

Text:

The Breakdown

Boys have a way of doing the most absurd things
whenever their motors refuse to mote.
They dust talcum powder on the cylinder tops,
or tie a piece of baby-blue ribbon on the pet-cock
when they have exhausted every other means.

Ingredients:
clip art, rubber stamps, torn paper, brads, acrylic paints, and raffia

Lessons Learned:
1) It's a little nerve-racking to do rubber stamping as the last thing on a page. If I had messed up the stamping of the gears, I'm not sure what I would have done to recover.
2) Glue pieces separately off the page to make sure they work right whenever possible, and then glue them down onto the book pages.

Reflections:
I had been holding onto the old advertisement for the motor boat company for a long time, wondering how I was going to use it. I didn't originally plan on including the chapter "The Breakdown," but when I read the paragraph about what boys do when their "motors refuse to mote," I just couldn't help myself. I had to put it in. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to use the ad and make this a "male-ish" page with more neutral colors and images.

While I was at a used bookstore in town last week, I was perusing the shelves and suddenly a book with a familiar title caught my eye. There in front of me was a book called The Motor Girls by Margaret Penrose! I couldn't believe it! Apparently, The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay is one in a series of books about the adventures of the motor girls who are originally shown driving what looks like a Model T. I finally got to see what the girls really look like thanks to two black and white plates inside the book. If you want to see the cover of that book and the photos of the girls, click here.

I went home and looked on the internet to see how much the books were worth. One of my big fears when I started altering this book was that I was ruining something valuable. What if my motor girls book was one of the only ones left on the planet, and it had been hiding undetected in this junk shop bookshelf? Turns out that's not the case. There are a lot of motor girls books around. Maybe you'll find one in your favorite used bookstore. Anyhow, I'm thinking that the next time I consider altering a book, I'll check on bookfinder.com to see if the book is a priceless treasure that shouldn't be tampered with.

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