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.