Altered Book of Doors

April 26, 2009

Altered Book of Doors

I was lucky enough to work in a book owned by an artist in Belgium who's new to our European Altered Books group. Her theme was "Doors" and the size and shape of the book was really fun to play with.

Normally I would dig through my very unorganized photographic files until I found a door picture that I wanted to develop the spread around. But because I was so miserably sick during the timeframe I had to work on it, I was extremely grateful to whomever enclosed a laminated magazine clipping of concentric arched doorways.

Using the shape of the laminated photo, I did the old "symmetric" trick where you make a horizontal cut to the center of the book's binding, and then lay the bottom half of your cut to one side of the spread and the top half of your cut to the other. You could glue the split halves down at this point, or go a step or two further like I did. I never glued down the bottom half of my split cut. I left it flopping in the middle. This later became the place where I attached the door image.

I am enjoying finding ways of making more interesting layers by playing with some of the pages that get sandwiched when you glue down all the different parts of the spread. What I did on the left side was simply rip (vertically) half of a page from beneath the top half of the "split cut." This left a rough edge. Then I punched holes into this stub with a square punch, tucking some orange transparent film under the "windows" and then glued the ripped portion of the page down to the left background page. Lastly I glued down the top portion of the symmetrical split-cut on the left hand side.

True to my stenciling obsession, I interesected the word "door" crossword puzzle style on both sides of the spread. I splashed watercolor over the text and then accented the lettering with water soluable crayons. Lastly I finished off the flip-flop door by punching holes around it's edge and then finished it off with fuzzy red yarn.