The base for this collage is the cover of a wooden cake box originally from a Hotel in Germany. I picked it up at Value Village and am saving the rest of the box for a future mixed media piece.

With the hummingbirds I decided to make yet further explorations into creating what I wanted by cutting the shapes from paper. This time the usual clouds, but also leaves, branches, and a nest for Mrs. Hummingbird. The wood was first layered with strips of sewing pattern paper to tone down, but not hide the existing text.

I left the original metal hardware on the box lid, as you can see at the corners and part of the latch on the bottom edge. I like trying to incorporate as much of the original details of these found materials as I can. I hope I can source more wooden boxes from Value Village before I run out of what I have.

Materials used: wooden box lid, security envelopes, book page scraps, sewing pattern paper, and paper birds.

Normally with the books I use in my altered book work the cover of the books ends up hidden away. This one was much too nice to not feature in a composition and so it’s ended up as the background for this collage.

I chose the crane for this because it was the first thing I came across when I opened the bird encyclopedia to select a bird. It seemed like the perfect one to go with the colours and flower motif. I decided to continue with the paper waves because the crane is also a wading bird.

I sorted through the pile of saved envelopes looking for something that would go well with the patterns on the cover but wasn’t the usual blues of security envelopes. I found one with this grey pattern that feels very Japanese, and it ended up being the perfect thing.

Materials used: book cover, thread, paper bird, book page scraps, security envelopes, and gel medium.

The canvas for this collage is the cover of a wooden box, the rest of which I used earlier this year in another mixed media assemblage piece. The Japanese characters are part of the original cover design and I tried to incorporate them into the composition because they’re lovely.

It was fun to try different things with the same materials. So far I’ve mostly been making clouds with the scrap book pages and security envelopes, but this time it made more sense to reference water because these are shore birds.

The finished artwork feels very Japanese, and I love how beautifully all the elements come together.

Materials used: sewing pattern paper, security envelopes, book pages, paper birds, wooden box lid, and gel medium.

This is part of a series of collages I’m creating as a warm up. I’ve taken most of the summer off from making things and it feels good to get back to it.

As mentioned previously, I’m tentatively calling this series, “Put a Bird on it”, as each one will be a whimsical composition containing birds. They all come from the same bird book I found at Value Village and each collage contains upcycled security envelopes, scrap book pages and thread. I’ve decided to use both found wood boxes and book covers as the “canvas” for these.

Even though it’s still months away my efforts in producing new work is in preparation for the Eastside Culture Crawl in November. Stay tuned for more new work.

As I get back into the flow of creating new work I’ve decided to continue creating small collage using reclaimed materials. I’m focused on sourcing wooden boxes as the base for these collage, and will use scrap book pages, security envelopes, thread, and birds cut from an encyclopedia.

I’m continuing with a style I started working on at the beginning of this year mixing the patterns created by the type on the book pages with the blue prints of the envelopes. Both papers are ones I’ve saved and collected. The wood I’ve used as the canvas for this collage is the cover of a wine box I bought at Value Village. I’ll be using the rest of the box for another piece.

My focus with this series is definitely whimsical scenes with birds. But I also want to create these with reclaimed materials upcycled into art. The most difficult part will be sourcing appropriate pieces of wood, though I’m also considering doing these on book covers.

It feels really good to be making new work.

I picked up an illustrated bird encyclopedia from Value Village a few months ago with the intention of using the bird illustrations in collage work. Some of the birds are fairly close to the life-size, which made them perfect to use on the paper tree.

I cut out twenty-five birds from the encyclopedia. Each one is glued to a thicker cardstock and attached to the tree with a pin. I wanted to be able to move them around and not make them a permanent part of the tree. The birds are a delightful addition, and I wish I had somewhere in my apartment I could leave the whole thing set up for my enjoyment.

The Tree of [Un]Common Knowledge was supposed to be displayed in the lobby of the Sandbar Restaurant for ReVision @ Creekhouse, which is a show of artwork made from recycled materials. Unfortunately I decided to withdraw it at the last minute because the space I was given in the lobby of the restaurant wasn’t suitable and I felt the tree was at risk of getting damaged.

I’m hoping to eventually find somewhere else to show this, so stay tuned…

I don’t feel I do this random style of composition well, so I was finding it tricky to know when to stop layering things. It’s just on the edge of having too many things going on and becoming a mess. But I love the papers overlapping and the colours are fun.

As with the previous collage pieces, this is available for purchase through my Etsy shop or in person.

This one is my favorite of the three because I was able to retain some of the previous work with simple additions of Japanese paper and leaves. The face is a statue I photographed in the Egyptian museum in Berlin combined with a photo of lily pads. It’s a style of digital collage I haven’t done in ages (and no longer like).

With this second collage I decided to give it a simple tweak by adding clouds made from book pages and security envelopes. I’ve always like some part of this collage but felt it was more of an experiment than something representative of my “style”. Now I like it much better.

It also ties in nicely with the larger collage I made a few weeks ago with airships (which is sold now, by the way).

The collages are made on wooden cradle frames ready to hang, and are both available for sale through Etsy (and in person).

I continued using the same materials in this one because I’ve been enjoying figuring out different ways to mix the book page scraps and security envelopes. This time I cut the paper into leaf shapes and placed them around part of the circle in a messy swirl as if they’re blowing in the wind.

I found this particular type of thread difficult to glue down because it kept sticking to the brush of gel medium instead of the paper. I decided to use it in the composition as a flight path for the butterflies to follow.

Materials used: wood, sewing pattern paper, acetate butterflies, cotton thread, book page scraps, security envelopes, and gel medium.

As always this collage is listed for sale in both my Etsy and Cargoh shops.

I decided to reinterpret an old collage from my sketchbook with this piece. I still had the same airships and colourful pixelated paper but incorporated new bits of whimsy. I took inspiration from the layers of book page scraps and security envelopes I used in last week’s mixed media collage to create clouds and suggest a sky for the airships.

Sewing pattern paper with simple lines is the first layer of this piece and it allows some of the wood grain to show through. The last item I added was the tangle of threads swirling their way through the composition from top to bottom. Everything I used in this, except the three airships, are recycled materials.

Materials used: wood, sewing pattern paper, magazine ad, silk thread, book page scraps, security envelopes, and gel medium.

This collage is listed for sale in both my Etsy and Cargoh shops.

These three goals came together with the collage I finished yesterday.

I started out wanting to make a collage using scraps of pages leftover from completed altered books and it evolved into a lovely finished piece with 3D objects, repurposed security envelopes, and part of a book cover cut from this altered book. I used the inside of a shallow wooden box as both canvas and frame.

Quite a few of these materials were items given to me by friends who no longer had a use for them. I’m really glad I could repurpose them into art.

Materials used: wooden box, partial book cover, scraps of book pages, security envelopes, wooden bobbins, silk thread, two paper birds, gesso, glue, and gel medium.

If you’re interested in this piece I’ve already listed it for sale in my Etsy shop. I’ve priced it in a slightly different way than the altered books because I view this as an experiment and want to keep this in an affordable price range.

The skull was quite fragile and missing a large part of the nose, so my first step was to assess every break through the skull. I had to determine where to glue without causing further damage and then reinforce certain parts so the whole thing wouldn’t fall apart. In the photo below you can see the paper “bandages” I created inside the eye sockets. I felt without these the glue wouldn’t hold and the bottom part of the skull would come right off. (It almost did while I was feeling about).

The book I chose to use is an encyclopedia volume with a lovely red cover with a raised border embossed on the front and gold letters and designs on the side. I carved through the cover and cut a niche three quarters of the way into the pages, making it large enough to accommodate the skull.

I took a short timelapse video with my iPhone 4 as I did this, which makes it look like a faster process than it actually was.

Once the book was ready I began pulling out materials to create the rest of the composition. I took inspiration from the background notes given to me by the client and used these to guide in the selection of objects. I won’t go into detail here but I was looking for things with symbolic significance specific to them.

The photo below was taken when I was satisfied with the placement of things and is a “sketchbook” version of the final composition. It helped me remember what should eventually go where after I dismantled and put everything out of the way. I still had much work to do in preparing the book and mounting the skull.

Above are some process shots I took while I worked on different things. I used a thick heavy thread at the base of the skull as this was the only point from which I could attach it to the book. These loops of thread were sewn into a heavy paper that was glued into the book and then covered over with the sewing pattern paper. The image above with the clamps was taken after the skull was mounted in the book and some of the pages still needed gluing together.

This is the finished altered book, many steps away from the previous photo. I used eight watch parts in the composition and it gives it an unintentional steam punk look. The fancy embossed border on the cover works nicely (as I’d hoped) with the rest of the composition. I love all the details in this altered book, from the shiny metal parts to the zig zagging fissures through the top of the skull.

This was an interesting project to work on because there were many problem solving challenges along the way. But that’s what I love most about making altered books. It always gets me thinking in new ways.

The outcome of this project is a positive one, with the client happy with the work I’ve produced and the first successful commissioned altered book under my belt. Here’s hoping many more will come my way.

Materials used: book, sewing pattern paper, tree bark, wasp nest, red thread, small glass bottle, seeds, watch parts, moss, and deer skull.

I picked it up again this week and decided to follow the same theme of birds, book pages, and thread from the previous two collages. I broke up the background image with pieces of book pages and tried to treat both as texture. The thread and bits of scrap paper add a bit more colour and give the collage some flow from one bird to another.

This is the largest collage I’ve ever created. It’s challenging to work larger and I think I prefer making smaller pieces because most of the materials I have to work with are small scale.

Materials used: scrap book pages, red thread, paper birds, rubber stamp & ink, origami paper, and gel medium.

I followed a similar theme in both collages, using paper birds, pages from books, scraps from the same yellow paper, and red thread.

It felt so good to make these. I always get a bit antsy when I go too long without making something and I love how easily these two compositions flowed out of me. I definitely want to make more soon.

Materials used: book pages, sheet music, red thread, paper birds, rubber stamp & ink, Japanese paper, Japanese maple leaf, and gel medium.

I was using a call for exhibitors at the CreativeMix conference as an excuse to experiment and collaborate. It was a whirlwind project to work on after learning of our acceptance at the beginning of October. The tree and graphics came together for the first time last Thursday (November 4th) when we presented the work publicly at the CreativeMix conference exhibition.

A bit of background. This project was an opportunity for me to explore the creation of larger work than I’d previously done, as well as to partner with a designer working in a very different medium than myself. I was curious to explore bringing together motion graphics with a handmade paper tree and how these two different mediums could interact with one another.

The work is inspired by the idea of a tree of knowledge, and we chose to interpret this in a literal sense in both the tree form and the graphics.

From the Resolve Design artist statement: “Our project began as a simple creative art exercise, developed over 4 days, loosely based around trees in general. But research about the evening migration of crows to the Still Creek roost uncovered commonly known, but oft-forgotten Vancouver facts – historic and current. The project quickly focused on exploring Vancouver, with trees as the connecting element.”

The photos below were taken during the run of the display. The tree was positioned against a 12′ x 10′ white wall with hardcover books and paper flowers placed around the bottom of the trunk. The projector was located approximately 16′ in front and fully covered the display wall with the projection, both running the animation and lighting the tree. The movie was on a two minute loop and used beautiful illustrations created by Kirsti and interesting text about Vancouver that flowed through and around the paper tree.

At the exhibition I was absolutely thrilled to see people drawn in by the piece. Little kids were enthralled with the animation and the tree, and at least a few kept their parents waiting while they watched it over and over. We had great feedback from people who stopped by to talk with us, and it’s pretty clear we gave people the sense of wonder I was hoping for.

Darren, Kirsti, and myself definitely want to show this work again at some point, though we don’t have any specific plans at this time. If you would like a chance to see the paper tree, it will be on display at my place during the Eastside Culture Crawl, November 26th to 28th, along with other new work.

Often when I’m working on these altered books I catch myself thinking about how many odd things I end up doing and the hilarity of trying to explain these out loud. Take for example this altered book. I had to figure out how to attach a kangaroo to a spring and then attach them both to a chair. Imagine trying to explain that one to someone asking about what I’m working on. Nevermind that it’s not a real kangaroo, or a full-sized chair.

By the way, trying to sew a kangaroo on a spring to a tiny chair is about as aggravating a task as you can guess. But it’s no one’s fault but my own for coming up with ideas I have to find elaborate and painful solutions to execute in order to get what I want. The stitches were the best way I could come up with to keep the spring secured to the chair but also allow for enough movement that the kangaroo can bounce around.

This is another colourful and wildly patterned book, which I’m happy about. The little chair came from Nicole’s studio garage sale on the weekend, and I painted it red to stand out strongly against the busy background. The eight wooden tiles came from a bag of sudoku tiles Ariane gave me. I decided to treat the number 8 as if it were a shape and not a number.

The kangaroo is the fifth new altered book I have made in preparation of the Eastside Culture Crawl. Very soon I will get everything framed and ready for sale.

Materials used: book, tissue paper, sudoku pieces, wood chair, metal spring, red thread, wood toy kangaroo, glue, and gel medium.

Part of the enjoyment I am getting out of creating work based around these wood animals is learning more about their flesh and blood counterparts. I’ve always been interested in animals but how much do I really know about most of them? Honestly, not much. But with each animal I pull out of the bag I’m learning something new.

The goose is a great example of this. They’ve always seemed like a ridiculous bird to me, but reading more about them has changed my mind. They are incredibly loyal, fierce defenders of their young, and gifted navigators. (Boris would probably also add something about how delicious they are). I almost fell heavily into Mother Goose whimsy with the goose, but the extra knowledge kept me from it.

I decided I wanted to make an assemblage piece with this book and have the main composition with the goose inside a niche. I used more colourful elements in this one just to switch things up because so many of my previous altered books lack colour.

The crazy blue and white patterned paper covering most of the book is from the inside of envelopes. I’ve collected a pile of different envelopes with patterns on the inside and as I was looking through these I found a few with this pattern and wanted to use it. I realized these were from Royal Bank mailings, and since I’d just received something from them I ripped it open to find more of the pattern on the inside that I wanted to use. Thanks for your great timing bank people.

The thread is the last element I added to the piece and as always it was very awkward to work with. Some of the thread is strung back and forth between the clarinet pieces, while the swirly bits were positioned and tacked down with gel medium.

The goose is the fourth new altered book in the wood toy animals series I’ve been working on. It will also be available for sale at my studio during the Eastside Culture Crawl.

Materials used: book, red thread, paper flowers, dried poppy seed pods, wooden blocks, wood goose, envelope paper, clarinet keys, gel medium, and glue.

When I pulled the bear out to work with I started thinking about polar bears but then inspiration led me (and I can’t remember how) to the constellation of Ursa Major. I felt this was a much more interesting idea to work with and sorted through my other materials looking for further items to incorporate into the composition. I was glad to find a star map in my paper box to use as the end pages in the book. But when I rediscovered the rusted bed spring, scavenged from Bowen Island a year ago and forgotten about, I then had everything I needed to complete the work.

I really wanted to do more with this book. The last two I’ve made have left the books as flat canvases. With this one I decided to fold and cut the pages and make it a three-dimensional piece. I spent a long time cutting and shaping the space in the pages where the bear would rest because I wanted to make sure he would sit flat and be well supported. The rusted bed spring also needed a lot of careful work to have it supported where it’s inserted inside the book. I reinforced things between the pages with cardboard so the spring would float over top rather than rest on the pages on the outside.

The metal stars and red thread were a final touch. These are meant to echo the star shapes and the lines that connect them on the end pages map. I always find working with thread rather aggravating because it slips away from me as I wind it around things like the spring and stars, but I love the affect.

This work will be available for sale during the Eastside Culture Crawl in November. I’m creating as much new work as I can to entice people to visit me for the Crawl.

Materials used: book, wood bear, rusted bed spring, red thread, metal stars, star map from an encyclopedia, glue, and gel medium.

The bag of animals made of wood has been a wonderful thing to work with so far. I’m enjoying pulling out each animal and choosing a different one each time to create a home for in an altered book. I’ve always adored this rooster for his proud posture and decided to run with the cliche of having him crow at sunrise.

As I began work on this I took a detour into studio cleaning as I went through my storage boxes of paper looking for things to use. All of the boxes were a complete mess and sorting through them allowed me to discover paper I’d forgotten all about. I used two of these to create the very colourful sunrise in the book. The triangle with bricks printed upon it is from collection of wooden toy blocks I picked up at RubyDog’s Art House, and it serves nicely as a rooftop for the rooster to stand on.

This altered book came together quickly and easily, which surprised me. It always feels a bit wrong when an artwork seems too easy, but I’m not really sure why. I’m really happy with it though, and love how colourful this is.

Materials used: book, sewing pattern paper, origami paper, wooden rooster, wood triangle, glue, and gel medium.

For the next little while, I have decided to focus on creating two series of altered books, one based around a collection of toy animals made from wood and the other around the blank books Siobhan gave me. It’s been awhile since I’ve made new work so this week I dove into the bag of animals looking for inspiration and came away with the idea to use four of them at once.

I started thinking about fables and folklore using animals to teach lessons and explain things about the world. I couldn’t find a suitable tale on which to base my composition but I kept thinking about Chicken Little and the Town Musicians of Bremen. The calf, goat, piglet and chick are in a tale all their own. It involves piling one on top the other to try and reach the sky, but also the wearing of special party hats. I leave the details of the story up to you.

I’m starting to make new work in preparation for the Culture Crawl in late November. This piece will be framed and available for sale at my studio, along with much of the work currently listed in my etsy shop.

Materials used: book, wooden animals, tissue paper, Japanese paper, cardboard, acrylic paint, wooden blocks, and poppy seed pods.

I need to create new work in time for the Culture Crawl in November, but first I need to put something together and write a proposal to submit at the end of next week. I won’t say much about what this one is all about because it’s in early stages. It’s an open-ended opportunity and I’m using it as an excuse to work collaboratively with friends and to create a large installation piece. The paper tree pictured here is a prototype for part of what I’m hoping to do on a much larger scale.

I’ve had the idea rolling around in my head for awhile about making a tree, and there are many different ways I could do it (and still can). I wanted to tie it into the altered book work I create and even contemplated making a tree out of books. Making the prototype helped to formalize my ideas and now I have a clear idea how to proceed with the larger version.

It’s a bit rough around the edges but I didn’t want to be too precious with it because it’s meant to be a first draft. My biggest frustration while working on this were my limited drawing skills, but they’re good enough to make the outline of a tree.

I’m hoping the final version will be magical enough to fill the view with wonder and awe. That’s not a lot to ask of my work, is it…?

The whole process started with selecting the right book for the project, one that was not too thick or heavy, and then I pulled out bits of ephemera to select the visual aspects of the book. I narrowed things down to a set of colourful pasteboard butterflies and started brainstorming ways of how I’d like them to move within the book. I decided the best way to proceed was to make a paper mechanism based on the designs in my book Paper Engineering & Pop-ups for Dummies. Most of the designs were vertical and I needed something to work horizontally, so it meant making a prototype in order to figure out how to make it work for me. Learning by doing is often the only way I can figure things out for myself.

Pictured here are the pieces of the prototype mechanism I made from cardstock. The next step was figuring out where I wanted to place these in the book and how I could adapt it to my needs.

I decided to incorporate two working mechanisms into the design and cut two niches into the book in the lower right and upper left, leaving a layer of pages on either side to hide the mechanisms.

I made two new mechanisms based on my original prototype but smaller so they would fit within the height of the stacked book pages. I needed to leave a bit of space underneath so the paper rod in the middle had room to move freely without catching on the bottom of the niche.

I padded the bottom and top edge of the niche with pieces of paper cut from the book itself.

(I skipped photographing a few steps here). Pictured below is what the book looked like after all of my work with the mechanisms was complete. They were tucked away in working order within the book pages with the middle rod poking through a hole through the top layer of pages. I chose two brass watch parts as the turning knobs. At this point I started figuring out the composition of the book and realized I needed to reconsider the red gears as the platform for the butterflies.

I chose sewing pattern paper as the first layer on the background because I love the yellow brown colour and warmth of the paper. I knew I would add something more to it as I went along but wasn’t quite sure what that would be.

At this point I had also decided to make leaves for the butterflies to sit upon, and these would be the pieces that turned. I made the leaves from green paper with magnolia leaf skeletons layered on top to make them look more real. This is my favorite detail of the whole artwork, and I kind of wish I hadn’t hidden so much of them under the butterflies when I attached them.

The final touches on the book was to add a few more decorative elements to the pages using scraps of Japanese paper and printing a leaf design with a rubber stamp.

There are eight butterflies all over the book, with five attached to the movable leaves and three in stationary positions on the background pages.

After all the work I did on this the actual movement within the book is very simple, it allows one to turn the butterfly leaves in a circle. I kept it simple on purpose because this is my very first movable parts book and there is plenty of room to be more ambitious with future projects.

The finished altered book is lovely to look at and fun to play with. Whether or not this work gets accepted into the juried show at 23 Sandy, it provided me with the opportunity to experiment in new ways and create work I may not have otherwise made.

Materials used: book, sewing pattern paper, Japanese paper, rubber stamp & ink, pasteboard butterflies, card stock, brass watch parts, leaf skeletons, lots of gel medium, and lots of glue.

My plan is to take twenty-five volumes of a set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias and insert natural objects into a niche custom cut from the pages of each book. The book pictured here is the second one I’ve completed, and as you can see the shape I had to cut was fairly complicated. The objects I chose to work with in this piece are two seal vertebrae scavenged for me from Pebbly Beach, Bowen Island, by Anne. The bones are very beautiful and I like their odd shapes protruding from the pages like two gargoyle faces.

I was over on Bowen last weekend and spent most of a walk along the beach and forest collecting things to use for this project. I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to come up with twenty-five different items but I came home with piles of stuff to work with.

Pictured here are crab bits, drift wood, oyster mushrooms, a pine cone, lichen, seaweed, and bones from a deer. (I had to scrounge through decaying remains to collect those, which is not for everyone).

I’ll reveal more about this project in coming weeks. For now I’m counting down as I work my way through the twenty-five volumes. As of today there are twenty-two more to go.

This old book wasn’t great to work with because the spine was a bit broken and the pages are yellowed and brittle. I went with it anyway because it was the perfect size for what I wanted to do and don’t have a lot of other small books on hand at the moment. I ended up redoing a lot of work on this book, like folding and unfolding all of the pages because it didn’t work with what I wanted to do. I also had the whole thing complete with arms attached when I decided it needed “something more” and pulled it all apart again to add the cover image.

At first I could not get my head around how to cut an arched niche into the open book pages because I usually do this when the book is closed and flat. It worked out rather well though and is just the right detail to house the apple. I chose to do this as a three dimensional standing piece to try something different. I also wanted the arms to be on the outside of the book and didn’t think their placement would work well in a hanging piece.

The vine “tattoo” on the wooden arms was added by very carefully using a rubber stamp. It’s not easy trying to print a design on a rounded surface without mucking up the design, but I did it. The red thread was the final detail I added because I again felt it needed ‘something more” to tie the whole composition together.

Materials used: book, inkjet print of photo, gel medium, plastic apple, wooden puppet arms, red thread, rubber stamp and ink, and pins.

Pictured above is the finished project I made the other day. Below is the simple inner workings of the pull mechanism using cardstock and part of a resistor. The pattern I learned from uses a washer/lever system that comes through a hole in the background paper to attach to whatever should be moving on the front. This method is better suited to moving something back and forth, but I wanted to move the butterflies up and down. I decided to make slits in the background paper for the wires to run along when the tab was pulled.

The tricky part was figuring out how to position the wires correctly through the background paper to match up with the butterflies, and then slip the resistors through the paper once they were glued.

The finished movement isn’t dramatic (pictured below) but I’m satisfied with having figured out a new approach I can apply to something else.

Here’s the top view of the project so you can see that I actually did all of this inside a real book.