The Queen's Return

My altered board book of Queens has returned from its year-long rounds through the hands of several Traveler's Hart artists and it really is great! This is the cover that I did that survived all the travelling much much better than I'd thought it would. Guess that foam padding helped, I thought for sure I'd lose at least one of the letter tiles. All that extra glue and glitter held it together though.
This is how the first spread by Kathy Martin looks, aren't these colors and transparencies fabulous? So much great complexity on these pages.

This is an almost graffitti looking urban design, how about all those great fonts together? I loved the little message pocket on the right, it has a very cool poem on it.
Turning the page we get to meet the Queen of The Rodeo by Terry Owenby. Doesn't that expression just make you smile?

and her neighbor The Button Queen by Shelley Boose, love all the embellishments on this page, so dimensional.



Next up is Queen For A Day! by Kim Wood. She's used some of my favorite vintage Anne Taintor imagery.She's co-ruling the Queenly Housewife page spread with Queen Of Her Kitchen by Vivan Montre. She looks like she would scare the potatoes right out of their jackets with her intensity.

Here's my page spread with the signature card pocket on the far right.


Here are the signature cards, actually queens of various suits from a couple decks of playing cards which each artist altered to suit her work.

And the reverse of those cards.
What a fun collaboration! I'm so glad that I played in this project because I learned a lot working on all these altered board books.

You can see the work I did in all the other altered board books for this project:

Jewels & Treasures,

Land Of Sky Blue Water,

Doorways & Passages,

Inspirational Quotes,

Favorite Quotes,

Eat Your Vegies.

Eat Your Vegies

One last and final book in the Altered Board Book Round Robin has come and gone. Vivian Montre's was one of my favorites which she had entitled "Eat Your Vegies!" She included a selection of vintage photos to use in our spread.


A background of a Dover wrapping paper of historic designs. Several artichokes along the right edge. And then three quotes that had to do with vegetables printed out on vellum.


"Let My words, Like Vegetables, Be Tender and Sweet, For Tomorrow I May Have to Eat Them" - Author Unknown



"Did You Ever Stop To Taste A Carrot? Not Just Eat It, But Taste It? You Can't Tast The Beauty And Energy Of The Earth In A Twinkie" - Astrid Alauda

"Life Is Like Eating Artichokes, You Have Got To Go Through So Much To Get So Little." - Thomas Aloysius Dorgan

I used several shades of green acrylic paint including metallic and some gold for the background. Round motifs were cut out of the wrapping paper used on the other page.
I cut the hand and arm out so she could be grasping the bunch of carrots. I thought her expression looked slightly exasperated like "Man, why did I plant SO many carrots this year?"

That was a fun project to participate in, I'm really looking forward to seeing what my book looks like when it is returned to me.

Life Has Been Your Art

Here's the most recent altered board book that I've worked on from the round robin collaboration I'm participating in. One more book is left to work on, almost done!
This book's theme is that it is to be a book of inspirational quotes. I found a quote I liked and then chose an overall green theme as you can of course see right away.



The pages were already gessoed, so I laid down several colors of green acrylic paints, did some texturing with various papers while the paint was wet and then added some gold brushed on the edges and center of the book. There was a card that I'd saved that I cut the Redoute' flower from, which is over the top of scraps of lime green cotton/satin left over from my Halloween costume. Redoute' is one of my favorite botanical artists, if you haven't seen his work, it is definitely worth the time to check out.
On the right hand page, you can see a stamped image of a woman, some green lace, sequin waste and green cotton fabric which was stitched before being glued to the page on top of some green ribbons and a painted tag. The dots are a puffy paint which started out orange but dried to this nice greeny-gold color.


The quote says: "Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music.Your days are your sonnets." Oscar Wilde

The left page has the Redoute' flower and the fabric scraps.

Now on to working out what to put in the last board book I have left to finish...

Happiness To Be Dissolved

Here's another board book from the round robin I've been participating in. This one came with a three-ring loose-leaf of chipboard/cardboard/tag board, oh let's just say VERY stiff pages that one could remove and work on. Very easy to handle when painting, though not really an altered book, but still fun to work in.
These photos make the background look really really fuchsia pink, but they were much more orange-y in person. After painting several acrylics on (took a lot of paint, this chipboard stuff really soaks up the paint like a sponge.) I waited for them to dry, then I stamped with a cloud stamp in orange to give more texture to the colored background.
We were supposed to include quotes that we liked, so I found one that I'd saved from an old Oprah magazine, along with that orange/yellow graphic on the right. That formed a pocket above which the words read: Happiness Is A Warm... And I also found a vintage-y looking sticker in the same colors.

The quote is from Willa Cather "That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." There are cancelled stamps of animals and lava, and a photo of a fractal image. More cloud stamps in orange and the red CONFIDENTIAL stamp that I have.

The words above the pocket for the tags reads: Happiness Is A Warm....So the tags answer that with BLANKET, SUMMER DAY and CUP OF TEA. I found three different orange ribbons to tie on the tags.
The back of the tags have a cancelled stamp with a blanket or rug, a summery piece of fabric, and stamped image of a cup colored in with colored pencils.. Yes I know Java is coffee and it says TEA on the other side. Turns out I don't have a teacup stamp, oh well, I liked how it looks, and one warm beverage is as good as another. And I also stamped over the tags with a stamp that says "Take Note" in a circle.

I just finished another board book from this project that I'll share soon here. And I have one more to work on, then that is it for this collaborative project. After working in a few of these books, I find that I like working in board books for some reasons, not so much worry about the background paper buckling, small compact size, but that they are harder sometimes to handle to keep them open as you're working, to not break the binding as you pin them down flat. Also, I guess when I do work in an altered book, I like to be inspired by the actual book, either the title, the text, or illustrations. And that really isn't appropriate or possible (several of the books have been completely gessoed) here.

In No Strange Land

Here is the first book I've worked in, (besides my own) of the altered board book round robin I'm participating in with other artists in the Traveler's Hart group. It is Lunaea's Jewels & Treasures.
So
if
you
are
Lunaea
or
someone
else
participating
in
my group,
turn
back
now...

Here's what it looks like inside with no flash.And here it is outside in the sun.

The pages were already a nice flat black gesso, a great base to work from, and I glued on a layer of crinkled purple tissue paper, then covered that up with purple and gold paints. The images are all magazine or catalog pictures, and old Italian stamps, and the poem is from a vintage book of poems I use for collage, on top of some Japanese candy wrapper with a cool pattern.
This is the left-hand page, taken outside so there is a shadow of the hand.
Some details of the left hand page, include some Italian stamps in various shades of purple and pink. And a shadowy hand that is....

A little popped-out, and sparkly of course.
This is the other side of the hand, it says Devotional.
Here is the poem, in case you can't read it:
IN NO STRANGE LAND
O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

This poem helped me pull together the meaning of the collage I was making here in Lunaea's book. That this devotional impulse is one of our greatest treasures we ever do possess. If it requires spiraling into and out of the dark deep cave, traveling far away or just looking at the palm of our hands. It is all intangible and unknowable and invisible. But yet we reach for it.

This is the right hand page of the two page spread.

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.