Okay, I decided to wait to post my greeting cards for "the girls". Today, I thought I'd write about an altered book I started some time ago to accompany one of my cloth art dolls on her round robin journey. If you have never participated in a round robin, it goes something like this: each person in the group starts a project, in this case a cloth doll. We were allowed to create as much or as little of the basic doll as we wanted and because there were only 6 people in my group and I knew my doll would require quite a lot of embellishment by the other artists, I started my project with the entire body, including a face I sculpted of polymer clay. We were to create some sort of a journal to go with our doll so that the other team members could document their contributions to the project. We were supposed to choose our favorite storybook character as the theme for our doll and we would have a month to complete our additions to each one before we sent it on its way. Okay, now that's out of the way, I need to tell you that I chose Scheherzade from "The Arabian Nights" as the theme for my doll. I have always loved this story and thought it would be an interesting subject for the others to interpret. Anyway, I was very lucky to have found an old library copy of the actual book for a dollar at Half Price Books and decided to alter it for my doll journal. I was just getting interested in paper art at that time and had never altered anything in my life (artistically, at least!). So... without further ado, here is my first attempt at book alteration. I'm highlighting only the pages I created myself.
I covered the hardbound book in upholstery fabric that I thought looked old and had a Middle Eastern feel to it and a wide fabric ribbon with gold metallic embroidery on the spine and added the tassels... what's an Arabian book without tassels, right? I printed and matted an illustration by Edmond Dulac and framed it with tiny metallic trim and placed it on the cover with the book title in metallic letter stickers (not sure you can read it on the photo though).
I used a large variety of products from paint, colored pencils and rubber stamps to stickers and ribbons to embellish the pages. If you look closely, you'll see the print of the text showing through some of the illustrations that I printed on vellum paper and acetate. And, in case you're interested, here's the completed doll that goes with it. If you'll notice, she stands on a miniature Turkish rug and her little pointy-toed shoes were a gift from a Turkish friend of mine who brought them back from one of her visits home. I used very large gold sequins for her finger cymbals.
So that's it for today. I know my posts have been rather long thus far so going forward, I'll try to shorten them as much as possible and still tell you what I think you might want to know. You can always ask questions if you want more information on any of my projects. I hope you have a wonderful day... it's almost the weekend again already! Yay!
Anniebee
