The Queen's Reign

Seems like it is time for another on-going project.
Here's the front cover of my altered board book for a round-robin collaboration project with some of the artists of Traveler's Hart.

If you are participating in this group, and don't want to see my project until it arrives in your mailbox, then

Turn

Back

Now

!!!


This former children's board book about dinosaurs was sanded down, and the cover and back was heavily coated with gesso. After that dried I painted with several different purples and metallics. It looks much different in person than in this picture. Metallics are so hard to photograph well.
I honestly was stuck for a theme for my book, so I took out a bag of game tiles and pulled out a handful telling myself that if I could spell something with the random letters then that would be the theme. And what do you know, I pulled out Qu E N S, close enough I thought.

The wavy stuff that the letters are set on is part of a former gift box that I thought was really cool and threw into a collage box, figuring I'd use it eventually. I just love the texture and dimensionality of it. I painted it in yellow and gold and I love how it pops against the purple of the cover. The letters are surrounded with a glittery glue, and I bet you can't guess what the queenly, crown-ish points are...
They are a former 5-pointed kid's plastic Sheriff star which I cracked apart with pliers, plastic shards were flying all over the place. Another good reason to wear glasses.


This is the page I did, using a postcard showing the Queen AS Country, aka Sovereignty. One of my favorite themes in literature, fantasy stories and history. There are also metallic papers, and old, but not quite vintage Canadian queen stamps.

This is the sign-in page which was painted with the same purples and a bit more gold, and gold-leafing too. A library pocket was also painted, and set on top of some silver paper. A strip of checked silk is on the bottom.

Included to "sign-in" on are 7 Queen cards from my growing collection of unusable decks of cards. Somehow with teenagers, this collection seems to be steadily growing, hmmmm. Well, they are useful for collage, right?

I thought I'd sign-in to my own book, so on the back of I glued some gold-stamped hand-made paper, with a magazine picture of a tarot card, the Queen of Coins from The Golden Tarot.

The reverse of the card, which I roughed-up with purple paints, and gold leafing, another Canadian queen stamp.

Can't wait to see what the other artists come up with on the subject of Queen...But that will be many months down the road. But, the good thing is I get to work on six books that will be cycling through my hands.