Hollowed Altered Book
In addition to the visual journal and the silhouette/star technique, we are also teaching the Saturday School class to make these hollowed out altered books.
The idea of an altered book can be a little sensitive, and it was funny when one of the students asked if she could read the book she was given to alter. “But… the pages already have stuff on them!!” I started to explain to her that she could paint over all the words if she wanted to, and make the book her own. And then another student asked me if the book was a novel, and could he read it? It’s definitely a strange concept to grasp, and I hope these kids don’t go to the library or anything and start wrecking books. Oh geez.
All I have done so far is hollow it out (which took forEVER) and paint the covers and the pages. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet, but I painted all the pages black (almost) and I think I want to use just white paint on the pages and do a black & white study. I think it would be cool because of the bright covers, and then maybe I would fill up the hollowed part with three dimensional colored objects? Or 3D white objects? I’m not sure yet.
Any ideas??
What are your thoughts on altered books?
Hi Nicole, We’re classmates in both Style School and now Indie Business. Just read the welcome post on IB and decided to visit a few blogs. I’ve spent some time on yours and love your projects! I’ve been wanting to make one of these altered books.. reminds me of something used to hide a break-out tool on Prison Break! I love your skyline painting too. Cheers and best wishes to you! xo
Thanks so much! Yeah, if I hadn’t painted the outside I could probably keep it on a bookshelf and hide secret things in it =) haha, maybe that’s what I’ll do next time. Thanks for stopping by =)
Hey! I just received a comment from you on my blog! it is nice to meet you Nicole! I really like the idea of leaving the cover of the book in it’s original form and then keeping secrets in it…I imagine how exciting it would be to pick a random book off the shelf and find that it was more than I had expected it to be…like a mini secret world for me to explore! Great!