October 5th, 2011
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.
October 4th, 2011
We now return to your irregularly scheduled update about altered books with owls.
I completed this one two weeks ago, at the same time as a book with a Long-Eared Owl which I will share later this week. This is a Barn Owl and she is the most elegant of all the owls I worked with in this series. It’s wonderful how different each bird has been from one another, and it’s ensured they are each pretty unique altered books.
I kept things very simple with the composition of this one. I added fancy end-pages with a leaf design in gold which works well with the elegant figure of the Barn Owl. I stayed away from leaves and trees for this book and decided to add a tangle of red thread around the bird’s feet. I was originally trying to create a thread nest but then realized this type of owl doesn’t make them. Nest or not, the thread stayed because it anchors the bird in the book.
I did yet another new way of folding with this one, a mix of two different kinds. It was intended as a horizontal piece but then I decided it worked better as a vertical, and also to mix things up with these.
The owl series is complete and I will be debuting them all in person at the Eastside Culture Crawl in November.
Materials used: book, fancy paper, red thread, paper owl, cardboard, and white glue.
September 23rd, 2011
I really loved this one as I worked on it and then when I finished I didn’t like it anymore. Now that I’ve had a few days to step away and look at it again with fresh eyes, I like it again. I think I was struggling with the lack of colour.
With this one completed now there are four of these books with trees/birds/doorways. I keep thinking about these as the “Birdhouse series” because the trees with doorways are homes for birds.
The small white birds are a set of wood buttons I picked up at Button Button last year. I’d forgotten about them until last week when I was looking for something to work with. I have a few more of these that are in flight, and then four black crow buttons as well.
I realized after finishing this one I don’t enjoy working on this series of books as much as I do the owls. The process isn’t as creative because I’m using a lot of the same elements and ways of making them. I think this may be why I stopped working on this series when I first started it last year.
I’m sure I can find a way to make the process more interesting…
Materials used: book, bird buttons, inkjet print of my photo, resistors, rubber stamp and ink, white glue, and gel medium.
