My First Altered Book....

For a while now I have wanted to alter an old book and I have had plenty of ideas buzzing around in my head.  I finally sat down a few days ago with the book I wanted to attempt to alter and began by removing the front cover and then cutting away at the centre to produce the shrine centre piece.  It took a good while to cut through all the pages, I had to be very careful as it was quite an old book and the pages were very thin, but after an hour or so (with a few tea breaks in between), the desired effect was achieved.  Then all I had to do was add the decorative elements!

At various points inside the shrine I have added very fine lace to build up a lace background both inside the shrine centre and also little bits exposed around the edges of the book.  I then printed out some butterfly images and the girl image from a Paper Whimsy collage sheet.  The butterfly images have been secured in position with decoupage pads to enable them to stand out slightly from the background.

The little lady has been mounted onto thick cardstock to give her stability and then I have created her paper skirt using tiny crinkled pieces of vintage paper secured and painted with Diamond Glaze to add some depth and texture to her skirt.  The book has then been bound around the outside with some decorative cotton ribbon with words such as "imagine" "believe" and "create".  The top binding is some garden string that I have aged with coffee and then wrapped around the top of the book and tied.  I am extremely pleased with the finished result and can't wait to create another one... Would love to know what you, my lovely readers think!