Wow Fabric in an Altered Book

Lesson 16 from Elizabeth's Altered Book tutorial is due.  It is all about adding fabric to the books and includes fabric dyeing, resists, cloth beads and other embellishments. This series has been way more work than I ever thought but I am happy I have done as much as I have and I'm even happier that I like this book. I think we are nearing the end and I'm looking forward to going through each page, adding the necessary continuity to the various pages and putting it all in place and fixing a nice cover for it.  A finished project!  shh, I mustn't jinx that motivation!

I have dyed and painted on fabrics before.

So for this project I mostly wanted to use fabric that was already available for the book.  I just freehand cut or sliced cotton fabric, most of which I have dyed.  I had a momentary thought of making a leaf stamp for a background layer but I'm realizing I like simple.

I gessoed the page remembering to incorporate the page beside it.  I just used acrylic folk paint which I watered down and kinda blended to try to match the green on the left hand page.  I dabbed the brush in and around the green areas.  Snoopy hasn't figured too prominently in the book but I have saved bits of the gang here and there.  The ducky ribbon did not work on the preceding page so I peeled it off and used the gel medium to try to get it on the tornado page. lol  hmm, I might have trimmed it this second time. ?  Dare I rip again???

I need to work on my tree shape but the beauty of using fabric or even paper strips is you can play, position and remove more effectively than you can with brush strokes!

This trunk needed more height but I ran out of page and I need to loose the hour glass shape!  lol  It is all glued down with gel medium and this one is Golden Soft Gel (Semi Gloss).

The idea for this came from a colour wheel made from pencil crayon points I saw during this past week.  I also have somewhere an old kindergarten art page master that uses a basic tree shape and you added construction paper leaves.  If I find it I think I'll clone it as it could be a stencil, a mask, a ???.  And it is not hour glass shaped but more vase shaped.  Now what if...

I'm sure my fellow Needle and Thread workers have lots more good ideas.

Which glue?

The Altered Book 101 is slowly coming together as I experiment with various methods for gluing pages together. This strengthens them for the various applications of colour and embellishing.

First option is a glue stick. It has the advantage of being relatively tidy. The pages dry flat.

Another cheap school product is white glue. This is messier and doesn't dry as flat. I used my finger to spread it and then the Kleenex stuck to my finger! lol


Gel medium is the one I've been using and I now realize I can spread it much thinner if I use an old credit card. It also dries flat and can be used as an adhesive and a clear finish. This is not as cost effective as the first options but I do find it kinda multi purpose.

Gesso is a substance that can be used as a glue as well as a substrate that is much like a primer. It dried fairly flat.

I used it to prime a page and glue down another paper. It worked fine but...

The pages curled quite a lot.

The cure for that is to apply more gesso to the back of the curled page.

It certainly solved the problem but I'm wondering if I would have had to do this extra step had I done this with the gel medium. Something more to try. I should also think about the amount of drying time but it is a good idea to do a lot of pages at one time for when those those creative times strike. Glue needs to be spread evenly, giving special attention to the spine as well as the edges.

EDITED: I did do a second trial with the gel medium as a glue. The pages did not curl even though I used the same paper colour wheel as with the gesso. I suppose there are different ways to do various things. The trick is knowing when to use which one!

Nix the Niches?

I am back working on my Altered Book 101 class. This niche was making me drag my heels a bit but I had it on my list of five things to do and it's number was up! Well, I'm going to be glad that I made a niche, but I'm definitely not making another niche this deep. They are not in the instant gratification category. A tad labour intensive. ;^)

First I sectioned off the front pages so I could work on the block of pages at the back of the book that I had reserved for the niche. I used the gel medium to seal up the edges opposite the spine. I clamped it tightly. Then I did the two ends and clamped them. I propped the whole niche section upright and allowed it to dry over night.

The clamps stuck a bit to the paper but I will be prepping the pages later with gesso and colour. I did use my nail file on some of the roughness.

Then I drew a square on the loose page in front of my block of pages which will be the niche. This is the shape for the niche. I used an exacto knife because that is what I had. I cut along the penciled line, working against my acrylic ruler and from each corner.

Then I tucked that first page in with all the foremost pages. It will be used as a window to partially reveal the contents of the niche.

And I began to remove the cut squares. I cut and removed and I cut some more. And there were lots to remove.

Growing weary in well doing I tried my handy dandy rotary cutter. Still, I needed the exacto knife for the corners. Actually I broke the very tip of the blade and I probably should have put another one in but we did 'getter done'! Perhaps hubby's retractable knife would have been better.

I had placed a mat between the block of pages which make the niche and the book's cover. I finally broke thru, cleaned up all the debris, used my nail file on a rather ragged edge and began to apply the gel medium all along the inside edges.

This is a bit tricky to get the clamps positioned but once again they hold things tightly in place as the edges dry and seal. The niche will then dry. It is done in advance because that is easier. We'll revisit the niche later. Next up is colouring the pages. Much more exciting than clear glue!!! Whoo hoo! I have jumped over that wall of procrastination.

AB 101 Covering

In the review I see I forgot to strengthen the inside cover and first pages which are attached to the cover rather than the spine. I had gotten the Mulberry paper so all I had to do was apply some gel medium after I chose the colours.

I liberally spread the gel medium right into the centre and then placed the mulberry paper, brayered it down and added more gel.

The two pages got a smaller piece of the green.

The inside cover got 2 pages of the purple which I overlapped in the centre for extra strength.

The back cover is where the niche goes.

I forgot the darn plastic clamps from my son in law while I was there yesterday. He has lots of cool tools while my dear farmer is of the old school called 'make do' and has old, dirty, rusty and not so state of the art. But I don't think my clothes pins will do the job so I await the DSIL's cool clamps. Or I can add them to the weekend's grocery list!

In the meanwhile I played with gel medium, paints and paper for my Common Threads Challenge. The theme is garbage and right now it is kinda looking like that is where it will end up. lol The base fabric is drying after its 4th layer of paint which will likely save it from incineration! I'll work on this next journal quiltlet tomorrow.