Altered Silver

"Echo" has had a couple small changes.

I used silver foil paper behind each E, C, H and O tag to give the letters a silver accent. With a small punch, I also added four stars to the far left of the spread using the same reflective paper.

After mixing up some more ivory color, all ten pages (including the mini-pages holding the tags) received random sponging, to match the ivory sponging that I'd initially put on the tags.

That's all for now.




Technorati Tags: altered books, art journals, collage, mixed media

Just for fun, I said to myself, how about doing something that involves cutting and looks cool, like to make some kind of thing that can go into a book? Sounds great, I replied, I'll make some tags.

Tags. Why tags? Tags are very trendy currently in altered books, general collage, ATCs, even scrapbooking. I usually don't jump to trends, but I have to admit that tags have a special allure for some reason that I'll leave to the philosophy experts to muse over. Meanwhile, I'm going to make some tags.

I didn't take any photos of the initial steps because frankly, I thought this was a momentary amusement that wouldn't actually make it into a book. I started by selecting a stencil alphabet of a good size (2"), then choosing a word to immortalize. The word I settled on was echo. I picked out a piece of scrapbooking paper...

Ah yes, I succumbed. One of the stores I was shopping at had a few styles of scrapbooking paper on sale and/or clearance with some of the prices as low as $.20/12x12" sheet. So I bought a selection of interesting designs that I thought I might be able to find some use for.

On the back of the paper I laid down the stencils in reverse. I didn't put them in the word order because I didn't want the "swirls" of the design or any of my painting to match together after the tags were cut apart. So I penciled them in a random order as E, O, H, C. Then I used an Xacto knife to cut out the letters themselves. Time to start taking photos.


Still working on the back of the paper, I painted across the lettering in an effort to emulate the front of the paper. After the initial painting, it dawned on me that I hadn't allotted for the height of the tags, so I tried painting in an additional upper area. Had to remix the paints and was trying to use very little since it was just a very small area, so there is a distinct difference between the two paintings, but I knew I'd have the chance to minimize the difference later in the process so I let it go.

I did the painting over a piece of wax paper which of course received some paint. It has an interesting look, acrylic on wax paper. I might want to remember this for some future application.


These photos were taken to show the front of the paper. Unfortunately, my camera is low resolution; what doesn't show is that there are printed streaks of blue and green that have the appearance of having been brushed on. To enhance the effect and add a little texture, I dry-painted what remained of my color mixture over the front of the letters, not to cover the print on the paper, but simply to enhance what was already there. Then I cut out the individual tags.


I braved the Scissors From Hell by wrapping a paper towel around my still-recovering thumb, and snipped fancy angled edges on the top of the tags. Then I reinforced the top center of each tag with a tiny bit of paper and used an eyelet punch and a hammer to put an eyelet into each tag.

Then I mixed up some ivory color and used a sponge to ponce a bit randomly across the tags.


It was time to simply set the tags aside for awhile.

Selecting an F&W, I picked out a spot and used a ruler as a straightedge to remove four pages (one for each letter) on a slight angle.

The full pages to either side were sealed and primed. When all was dry, I put the blue and green onto my palette again and painted the full pages plus both sides of the torn pages. This stage took awhile since there are five total spreads (involving the four torn pages plus the two outer pages). I let each spread dry before moving along to the next.


When the final spread was drying, there was still quite a bit of paint remaining on my palette. For the fun of it, I used a foam roller over it, then painted on spreads in two other books, simply rolling the roller back and forth until the pages were covered. From right to left in the photo, there is the "Special" spread (which I'll post about in the next entry), the "Echo" layout, the first rollered spread, the second rollered spread. Pulling the paint right from the palette created an interesting speckled pattern, and the foam roller gave a bumpy texture to the pages.

There will be more to come on the "Echo" layout.


Technorati Tags: altered books, art journals, collage, mixed media