An Altered Book:: The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay

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

Text :

Suspicion

How quickly the scene of enjoyment turned to one of alarm.
Lightning began to flash
thunder to rumble.
The motor girls feared for their safety.
Who was this strange young man who seemed so friendly?
What did he want in Crystal Bay?

Ingredients:
magazine clippings, crystalline and other fancy papers, shrink plastic, stickers, acrylic transfer images, clip art, rubber stamps and ink, wire

Lessons Learned:
1) Instead of closing the book and then weighting it down to prevent the pages from buckling, I opened up the two pages spread them out flat, turned the book upside down and weighted it. (I use my pasta machine as a weight, by the way.) Came out so much better than previous times.
2) As I add artwork to a page, there's this sort of collateral effect on the pages I have already finished. For example, my frights or fancies page shrank! I could hardly open the pages up. I had to cut two butterflies that straddled the gutter of the double page spread so the book would open. This really surprised me. I think it may make more sense to work off the book for collage, especially when a lot of glue is used, and then glue the finished art into the book whenever possible.

Reflections:
First off, making the crystalline papers was way too much fun. What I did was take white tissue paper left over from Christmas presents - just cheap stuff that I cut into fourths. I painted a layer of gloss gel medium on one side. Let it dry, and then painted another layer on the other side. I then used acrylic paints to play with color combinations and designs. The paint seemed to just glide over the acrylic. (I have a separate page where I show you how to make crystalline paper.) It was so much fun, I didn't want to stop. I would spritz the paper with water to make the colors more transparent. Some of the color combos I used turned out rather yucky. The red and gold that I used on these pages turned out the best. I used torn pieces of this paper as part of the collage, along with magazine clippings and other fancy schmanzy papers.

The two men are both done using an acrylic transfer technique, although I didn't do it straight on to the collage. I ended up with two thin acrylic images that I glued down on the collage. I love the way the text is showing through the mirror that the man on the left is holding. And I like the way the colors show through the man on the right (although I would have been more conscious of how the patterns in the background affect the appearance of his face.)

I made the little key using shrink plastic. This was my first time stampin' 'n' shrinkin', and it was really fun, and something I'd like to try again.

This page was the most difficult one for me to design so far. I looked at the chapter title "Suspicion," and knew I wanted to use it, but what would the motor girls be suspicious of in their lovely little bay? How about a man? The pieces of text I found just seemed to lend themselves to the idea of them being suspicious of a man who mysteriously appears.

I think it is so fascinating how you can start with just one little wisp of an idea . . . just a word or a color or one simple image . . . and then your brain just sort of brews up something that ends up surprising you. It's so exciting when things just click.

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