Altered Silver

As I began working on the 6x6, I took a few pictures along the way to help show the process. I didn't take all the pictures in order, so they show the steps with different example pages. But the process was quite the same for each of the 40 pages.

The initial step is to wrap the rest of the pages in plastic cling wrap, leaving free only the two I'm working on at the time.

Staring awhile at the blank pages, consulting the planning list for the color scheme, and determining how the tissue paper colors will be applied.

Tearing sections of the handwritten papers to fit, in whatever direction seems appropriate for each spread.

Securing the handwriting in place using matte medium. The handwriting is being used as an underlying texture-pattern, which will be covered and partially obscured by the following layers, and that's fine. The writing isn't meant to be readable.


When the writing is all in place, the colors can be added. This is also done with matte medium.

Then the book is set aside to let those pages dry.

When dry, the plastic wrap is opened, and a fresh page is released.

The book is flipped over, and the verso page of the just-dried spread is added to the stack of finished pages. A sheet of wax paper is placed over it.

Then the plastic wrap is again sealed around the revised group of remaining pages.


The steps are repeated until there are no more blank pages (although the covers will remain blank for some while yet). The time it takes for a spread to dry depends on how many layers of writing/tissue have been applied, how much humidity is in the air and how thinly or thickly I applied the matte medium. I tried to give them at least an hour before moving on to the next spread. It took about two weeks for this stage to be finished throughout the forty pages.

During the waiting periods, I worked with the F&W books, which I'll speak about in my next entry.

As I collected goodies from shopping excursions (and tried to find a storage place for each item as it arrived), I began planning what I wanted to do with the 6"x6" spiralbound sketchbook. One of the aspects of the book that appealed to me was that there were only 20 pages (40 faces). I thought that with such a low and restricted number of pages to work with, it would best serve to give the book some kind of theme to be reflected throughout.

I took a look around for items I already owned that might be usable in the book as embellishments. Lots of interesting stuff turned up, but if I was going to establish a theme and work it through all the pages, I needed some kind of embellishment in quantity, like 40 pieces. So then I had to look around again and try to think of what I might have in plentiful quantity that would be suitable for adding to a book, that would play together on some kind of interesting theme, and also be something I would not mind "sacrificing" to my first book art

I found five items that suited my requirements :
1) A deck of Old Time Christmas Angels playing cards that I'd never even taken out of the shrinkwrap. The face of each card features a different Victorian angel image.
2) A set of The Angel Cards, tiny and whimsically illustrated, that I hadn't looked at in many years. Each tiny card shows an uplifting word next to a cute little angel drawing.
3-5) Three mini-books by Dr. Robert Anthony called Think, Think On and Think Again. Each page of these 3"x3" books has a single motivational statement (some of which are quoted here), and they're arranged on the pages such that no statement has another statement immediately on the other side of that page. In other words, it's made so you can cut or tear out each one (the pages are even perforated to faciliate this) without cutting into any of the others. I bought all three of these mini-books on a whim sometime in the early 80's just because they looked kind of cool.

I wanted to add handwriting to the pages as a kind of texture. At first, I wasn't sure how I was going to do that, but then I realized I had a huge supply of handwriting - my own! - in a series of journals I'd kept over the years in spiralbound notebooks. I selected one of the notebooks (from a period of 1989) and began ripping out sections to use as texturing. The first rip was very difficult, feeling destructive, but I must say I really loved the idea of using my past to create something for my future.

On lined paper, I wrote the numbers 1-40 in two long columns, then began sifting through The Angel Cards, picking out the words that I wanted to use in my 6x6. When all 40 words were chosen, I moved to the Victorian angel card deck and began selecting which image seemed to best relate to each chosen word. When I'd matched 40 of those together, I moved on to Anthony's books, first cutting out the statements most aligned to the spirit of what I was building, then sorting through my selections and matching each of them up with a pair of the angel cards.

The next step was to decide what order the words would be in the book, thereby being able to see which words would face each other in an open spread (when the book is open, two facing pages will be visible at the same time). Then, to examine each trio (word card, playing card and Anthony statement) together with its facing trio and determine a general color scheme for each spread.

At last, all the main elements were gathered, sorted and organized. Along with rolls of wax paper and plastic wrap, I brought all the materials into my studio. It was time to begin altering those forty 6x6 white pages.