I’ve had a love of lions since I was a kid because I was born under the astrological sign of Leo. I have also always wanted one as a pet because taking a lion for a walk would be so cool, at least until it decided to eat someone, or someone’s dog, or me. I have a whole list of inappropriate pets but for now I’m maintaining things at one small bird and two small fish. But I digress…

I think the significance of lions as my birth sign made it difficult to settle on just the right setting for this wooden lion in an altered book. I tried to make him a home in about three or four of the previous books but nothing felt right. I ended up doing a bit of internet research on lions to help inspire me but the reality of the situation for these creatures in the wild is quite depressing. They once ranged all over parts of Europe, Asia, India and all of Africa and now have mostly been wiped out in the wild.

More of my research led me to the rich symbolism of lions. They are often called “King of the Jungle”, but this is a misnomer since they don’t live in jungles at all but prefer to dwell in savannah grasslands and semi-arid plains. In ancient cultures the lion is considered a solar animal symbol (Leo is a sun sign) but lions are actually nocturnal. I took all of these bits of information and tried to incorporate them into the imagery of the book.

The rolled pages with brown leaves stamped on them became the grassy plains and also reference the jungle, while the stylized wood pieces (from a musical instrument) are the palace of the king of beasts. The two tarot cards were a lucky find so that I could include both the sun and the moon in the book. The crown on the lion’s head was the finishing touch that I added as an afterthought but it gives it the right bit of whimsy and ties things together.

Materials used: book, tarot cards, wooden toy lion, wooden musical instrument parts, Japanese paper, rubber stamp and ink, and gel medium.

First off the basic idea of this book, the style of folding the pages, was completely inspired by a wonderful altered book by Sharon McCartney. I liked the shape created by folding the pages in half lengthwise and tucking each one into the book. I also loved the idea of creating a niche within folded pages to contain an object instead of ones glued together flat as I’ve done in the past.

This work started out as a home for a wooden lion, and then was briefly destined to be a home for a wooden kangaroo. Neither seemed quite right so I brought out the stack of teacups to play with. These little teacups have been waiting in the wings for awhile to make their way into a book. I wanted them to be stacked irregularly, and with this book I managed to pull it off. Only the cups at the top and the bottom of the stack are attached to the book, the rest float freely and can twirl and twist in place. (See the video at the bottom of this blog post for a demo.)

I was thinking about the idea of “tea time” as I worked on this, so I chose a few small gears from my collection of watch parts to decorate the end pages along the side. There are also two small spoons to tie into the tea theme. I bought these from RubyDog’s Art House as part of a tiny cutlery set, and the spoons are my favorite.

To demonstrate the moving part in this altered book I shot this quick video using my laptop’s built in camera. You’ll need to turn the sound up on your computer because it’s a bit quiet.

Materials used: book, card stock, watch gears, metal spoon, ceramic teacups, rubber stamp & ink, metallic paper decorations, and gel medium.

This is the second of the blank books I am working with to create a series using imagery of trees and birds. I don’t think this one is as successful as the first book and the more I look at the finished product the less I like it. The different elements don’t quite come together and the branches look like antenna sticking out of the top of the book. I think I will work on this one a bit more…

The cover image is another of my black & white tree photos taken with a Holga camera. I wanted to have the doorway cut directly into the trunk of the tree to create a sense of shelter for the nest inside. The two yellow feathers are from Yuuki the lovebird and the blue stone is actually a heart-shaped piece of beach glass I found on Bowen last year. The nest came fully formed from Michael’s craft store, where I went a few weeks ago looking for supplies.

After gluing the pages together with gel medium I used a drill through the top of the book to create holes for inserting the branches. It worked better to start with a small drill bit and slowly make the hole larger rather than starting with the correct size. The paper didn’t have much resistance against the larger drill bit and I had to be careful not to destroy the book in the process.

I really like adding a little “something” to the sides of the book as a finishing touch to break up the white space, and have used rubber stamps on the last two books.

Materials used: blank book, ink jet print of holga photo, gel medium, tree branches, lovebird tail feathers, nest, beach glass, acrylic paint, rubber stamp and ink, decorative paper, and door transparency.

A few months ago my friend Siobhan gave me eleven blank books to work with and turn into altered books. I’ve been pondering what to do with them and finally decided to take the plunge and actually explore ideas instead of just thinking about them. Each book is about an inch and a half thick with a plain white cover and pages, and began life as a stand-in dummy for Harry Potter books. I’ve never had so many of the same kind of book at my disposal so I’m hoping to use their uniformity to turn them into a series.

Because these books have spines that are glued together to attach the pages it limits what I can do because they aren’t as flexible as a stitched binding. I decided to cut through the cover and create a niche inside the pages and used the shape of the door frame as my guide. When I started cutting I wasn’t sure what I would be putting into the book but I wanted to do something with birds. I cut about half way through the book then glued and painted the pages together. The three birds were chosen, cut out and inserted between the pages with two layers of different tissue paper as a background inside the niche.

The image covering the outside of the book is a black & white double-exposure photograph taken with my Holga a few years ago. At first I attempted a gel medium transfer of this on the cover using an inkjet print, but the paper on paper transfer didn’t work so well. I settled on attaching the print itself to the cover and coating it with gel medium to create texture and a protective coating. The door frame is a transparency and I painted the back side of it white so it would stand out more strongly from the background of the tree branches.

As I was about to attach the branch along the left side of the cover I decided to add three leaf-shaped glass beads to give it a bit of colour. The leaf pattern along the sides of the book were added using a rubber stamp and ink and also add life to an otherwise blank space.

Materials used: blank book, print of double-exposed holga photo, paper birds, blue tissue paper, acrylic paint, rubber stamp and ink, gel medium, driftwood branch, and three leaf-shaped beads.

I love buttons and have a small collection I’ve been holding onto for a long time. Some of these are ones purchased in Toronto years ago, while others come from Dressew and Button Button. A small number were scavenged from my mom’s giant tin of buttons, and a collection of sewing fixings given to me by Boris’ mom Anne.

When I was trying to brainstorm a new altered book I pulled out the buttons, along with other materials, and played around with them as I decided on what I wanted to do. I settled on the buttons because the colours and textures appealed to me and I also thought I’d finally tackle some experimenting with sewing on paper.

The irony of choosing so many buttons to work with in this book is that I hate sewing buttons. It’s one of those small tasks I tend to procrastinate, and it takes me FOREVER to get around to reattaching one when a button has fallen off my clothes

Sewing through the pages working well even though the paper was old and brittle and not as forgiving as fabric. I think layering sewing pattern paper on top of the page helped to reinforce it slightly. The piece of paper I chose happened to explain different symbols found in sewing patterns including that of buttons and other fasteners. I added the red threads as a finishing touch, winding them around the three flower buttons and attaching them to the back of the book.

Material used: book, sewing pattern paper, red cotton thread, fifty buttons made with a variety of materials, glue, and gel medium.

This is one of those pieces where I began without a plan and just followed wherever the book wanted to go. I wanted to create another folded page book using the same fold pattern as I did in a previous work but I had no idea where I would go from there. I tend to select objects and materials to inspire the direction of the work, but this time I didn’t do that.

This is a book of four hundred and thirty pages which means I folded about two hundred pieces of paper. When I finished folding I played around with the paper further and eventually decided to roll the pages underneath one another. I added colour and pattern using a rubber stamp, first in yellow and then in green. I actually had the whole thing close to completion when I decided the yellow wasn’t strong enough colour over the text. I had to go back, unroll all the pages, rubber stamp them, and then roll them again. The butterflies were the final element and their bright colours are the perfect compliment to the crazy folded background.

Materials used: book, rubber stamp and ink, paper butterflies, and lots of glue.