As mentioned in a previous blog post, rummaging through my art supplies inspired me to create an altered book with fish. It may just be that I have fish on the brain lately, but rummaging through my supplies reminded me of the gold paper fish I’d bought from Urban Source over the summer. It was high time to use them. I added the red colour to each fish using ink because I didn’t like the plain gold, and now they unintentionally resemble salmon.

I wanted to create a sense of water moving, of waves crashing with the pages, so I began to play around with folding the pages under one another. At first I was only going to do part of the book, but then the more I did, the more it made sense to fold every single page. The Japanese paper I used on the end pages reminds me of the pattern created when raindrops splash into the still water of a pond or lake. The finishing touch of the book was to add the red and white flowers, which were created using a paper punch.

Materials used: Japanese paper, book, flowers made with a paper punch, rubber stamps, ink, and metallic paper fish.