The Snowy Owl marks the end of the owl series of altered books I’ve been working on (at least until I can find more to use). This is the largest owl of the five, and probably the most intimidating with that glare of hers.

The composition for this one is pretty spare, and I’m struggling with whether to leave it as is or add a little “something”. From what I can tell these types of owls don’t perch in trees, and their environment isn’t very colourful. I decided to share it even though it feels unfinished.

I divided the book into four sections and folded these in alternating directions. I refolded some of the page ends to suggest a rocky (icy?) environment for the owl, and added silver and blue paper as the end pages.

My next step is to frame this one along with the other four. All of these will be on display and available for sale during the Eastside Culture Crawl in November.

Materials used: used book, decorative paper, paper owl, cardboard, white glue, and gel medium.

When I first began creating altered books I would go to great lengths to come up with these wordy titles. I haven’t really been doing that lately but for this one I decided to go back to my former way of coming up with a title, which is asking google. In this case I looked up “quotes with owls”.

This is a Long-Eared Owl, and though its ear tufts aren’t actually ears I like the idea that it’s a good listener.

The book was very fun to fold and I love the way the bottom and top sections swirl around one another. With all of these owl books I’ve been folding pages a second or third time after the initial sectioning and folding. It can be a tedious process to crease a three hundred page book and this is how I keep things interesting. It also has resulted in more sculptural work.

For the Long-Eared Owl I returned to making leaves using a paper punch and printed paper to create the suggestion of a tree. I also selected very dramatic Asian-inspired black paper with a gold pattern as the end pages.

There is one more owl altered book to unveil, so stay tuned.

Materials used: book, fancy paper, paper punch, paper owl, cardboard, and white glue.