An altered book is what it says it is . . . a book that is altered.  They can be many reasons to make an altered book; self-discovery, a healing journey or as a gift for someone.  In one of my workshops a mother made an altered book for her daughter expressing her daughter’s life’s journey inter-woven with expressions of poetry and love from the mom. It was a beautiful book complete with a shadow box in which mom placed a tiny cross.

Another workshop produced individual journeys and healing from abuse.  One woman did her whole book in black and white and at the end when she emerged from the cycle of healing there was an explosion of colour on the last few pages.  It was very powerful.

Another woman did a lovely little book celebrating her grandchildren and one of my favourites was a book full of nature clippings that offered serene and safe pages to visit. I’ve had people tell me that making the altered book actually changed their perception and had a huge impact on their lives.

It’s one of those projects that will take a long time and a lot of commitment to finish it-save it for Sunday afternoons.  Curl up on the couch with music or even the television playing quietly for company.  Cut out pages and pages of pictures at random-whatever jumps off the page at you.  Not just pictures but sayings as well. Once you have a huge pile of clippings the order seems to fall into place quite naturally. Don’t over think the project.  Let you spirit guide you.

Step by step:

1. Find a book that you won’t angst over if you rip out pages and mutilate-Reader’s Digest Condensed hard cover books work the best-they are the right size and have great leather-like covers and they are sturdy.
2. Every 10 pages, rip out 10 pages all the way through the book using a white glue (diluted works best)
3. starting at the front glue the pages together in groups of 200.  So at the end if you started with 100 pages you will now have a 20-page book.  Collaging both sides, you’ll have 40 pages to collage.
4. If you haven’t come up with a theme while you were clipping out the pictures look them over and see if there is a pattern.  Were all your pictures about being a strong woman? healing? growing in some way?  Once you decide find words that you have already cut out to be your title –for healing you might have found something like Scar Wars, Let Go, Take Time, A Work in Progress, Journaling Your Way to Sanity (these are all titles I found in women’s magazines)
5. Collage the hard cover in something that is a cool pattern-National Geographic is great for that with fold out pages of the same scene or pattern.
6. Work your way through the book covering every space-overlapping, adding personal things like photos, feathers, jewelry, poetry, whatever . . .
7. If you want a shadow box –glue at least 20 pages together at the back of the book and then using an exacto knife cut a hole in the pages (not all the way through) and put a treasure in the box
8. Your personal altered book will be something that will bring you peace and serenity every time you look at-when I look at mine, I remember the long hours of solitude gluing and cutting and the satisfaction felt when I was finished.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Self Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.