Inspired Me!

I've read 3 or 4 books already on altered books, but just couldn't seem to get started. This one gave me the details and confidence to actually get going.
It discusses the process, history, altered book groups, and collage.
It gives ideas for displaying the results or giving them as gifts.
It talks about building a page by choosing a theme or concept, considering the mechanics, design, backgrounds, layers and mistakes.
The next section helps you choose a book, and covers adhesives and attachers, coloring for pages, decorating supplies, papers and embellishing tools.
It clarified for me how to prepare the book, gluing, cutting windows/doors/niches and listed 101 ways to alter a book.
Other techniques explained are:
Rubber Stamping
Decoupage
Coloring
Polymer & Air Dry Clay Embellishments
Transferring
Embossed Metallic Embellishments
Microscope Slide Embellishing
Stamped Spackle Embellishments
Crackled Stones (Dominos)
Burnt Edged Papers
Sealing & Protecting
Watercolor Batik
Beaded Edging
Torn Window Collage
Leather-Bound Memorabilia Book
Cheesecloth Masking
Tags & Envelopes
Bleached Stamped Pages
Fabric Pages
Needlework Pages
Woven & Folded Pages
The needed tools and supplies are listed in a box next to the inspiring photos of altered books where that technique was used. I practiced some of the techniques on old greeting cards that had piled up. The results impressed me and I even sent some off to family and friends.



Rating:


Altered Book collage

At first I was dubious about purchasing this book over the net as you couldn't view the pages within. However when I received the book, I was definitely not disappointed. I would say my skill level on altered books is intermediate and this book proved to be a wealth of information. The instructions are really clear. Easy to understand and there was no shortage of techniques described. I also especially enjoyed the images. The photos were cleare and large making it very easy to see tiny detail. A book well worth the money.

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I wanted to be Awed !!!

For anyone who has the slightest knowledge of art mediums, this book is not very informative. I was really hoping to see some stand out collage art and was underwhelmed. It seems that the pages were "created" to be teaching pages and were a little ho-hum. For the person who knows nothing about art mediums, this book just leads you in the direction of what supplies to get but goes into no real detail. Minimal descriptions of techniques lead you to experimenting on your own. I'm glad it didn't cost very much and would not recommend it to anyone.

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