An Altered Book:: The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay

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

Text:

Crystal Bay

Not out of reach,
a trip
across the bay
to the shores of a real
civilization.
Very early in the morning
the motor girls at Crystal Bay,
attempt an escape.
The call was too strong that
one morning, at least
to run
away to
other shores.

Ingredients:
tissue paper, washi paper, cardstock, stamps, embossing powder, acrylics, ribbon, stickers. beads, doilies, silver tin

Lessons Learned:
1) Purposeful collage is not for the faint of heart!
2) It may be better to get a slow-drying glue. While I love the feel of the the Perfect Paper Adhesive, it dried too fast for me. If I had to move something, it was very tough.
3) Keep my fingers clean. It's amazing how gray my fingertips got, and then I'd press down on that pretty light pink paper and - damn, a finger print! Looks like I'll have to add another purple mountain. I started wiping off my finger tips with a diaper wipe. I also cut a tiny bit of wax paper and kept it handy to smooth down the papers after gluing.
4) Be careful about using beads. When I was finished with the stringing, the book wouldn't close. I had to rethink things and take some of the beads out. I also pulled some pages out and that made it work better.
5) Be careful about glueing groups of pages together until I'm sure about what I'm going to be doing in the next section.

Reflections:
Wow! This took me a lot longer than I imagined. I painted all around the text last night so that I could collage today, but I had no idea it would take me so long. I love the text on these two pages. There was something so romantic and mysterious about the way the words worked out. I knew in my mind right away that I wanted to have the Crystal Bay on this page, and I saw someone from the altered books group who had torn back layers of the book pages to give the layered look that I used for the bay.

The hills and castles came to me as I was looking for paper to use. I found this one 6 X 6 square of washi paper that looked like hills at sunrise with cranes sailing across the sky. Perfect! Then I imagined a place that would be a magical "civilization" that the girls would want to run away to. I was lucky that I had just the stamps I needed. But I knew I couldn't get all the images I wanted on the page without covering up the text, so I decided on the fold out pages. Click here to see directions about how to do the fold-out pages.

Getting the collage to come out just right was hard work but exhilarating - like putting together a puzzle and watching a picture appear.

It's late. I've put wax paper between the pages to keep them from sticking together and weighted the book down to flatten it as much as possible. I feel very wired right now. Maybe it's because I created something beautiful. Or maybe it's just the caffeine from the Coke I drank at dinner. 1/2/02

Finally finished the front of the fold out part and the string of beads. I really wanted more texture on the page, so the beads helped to do that. I think they look pretty, but I almost had a heart attack when I saw how bulky the book had become. I had to remove some of the beads from the front section to make sure the book would close more cleanly. It's still a bit lumpy, but not nearly as bad as it was.

I'm already thinking about the next page which is from the chapter called "Frights or Fancies." It's going to be very dark; I need something to contrast with the pastels I've used so far. I can't wait to get started, but I think I'll have to. Back to work on Monday and haven't corrected a single paper that I brought home. Oh well... I wonder if there's a twelve step program for artists? 1/5/02

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