Hellooo!  Here is one of my new products featured over at my Etsy shop, Peridot.  What do you think?  I really like the bright colors against the white for some reason… the paper is really pretty too.

The best part about them (in my opinion anyway… ) is their SIZE.  They’re little =)
Cute, right??  I hope you like them =)

This is the first page, before I put the covers onnn

And then I put a camera on the cover to make it a little more interesting (the class I’m teaching is Digital Photography.)

It’s RIVETING.  Haha.

Omg just a few more days until Spring Break =)  I need it.  And I’m going to Chicago for the St. Patrick’s Day festivitiesss  !!

Okay here they are:

A key that matches the one on the outside of the book, some stitching, and an instax self-portrait (I am so cool, I know.  It’s not as weird/cheesy in person, TRUST me.)

At the top of this you can see the bottom of that instax photo (just to give ya a little context)  =)

I will be posting more pages soon.  Hopefully.  Definitely.  (And probably full page shots too, I got a little shy with this one!)

It measures about 4.75 x 3.5 inches, so it’s little and cute, and has 32 pages.  One day when I open my Etsy shop (it’s going to happen, I promise… hopefully soon) I think I might sell something like this.  I love how small it is and I could switch up the colors and the heart and the number of pages and and and… !!

What do you think?

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?

oh.my.

I have never really been into stamps before (I figured I would use them once and then be done with them, so what was the point?) but she has the most amazing stamp collection ever.  Ever.  I now want to search for stamps. and to make my own so I feel a little more like it’s my work.

So anyway, I painted my bookcovers…

Gorgeous.  I know.

And then I took this girl stamp, stamped her on some white/off-white paper, cut her out and glued her on:

Seriously, how is it possible for a stamp to have that much detail?!  I mean, it’s not exactly a huge stamp.  Oh and the black on the bottom is from a dash stamp, from one of her alphabet stamp sets.  I did that across the top and bottom of both the front and back covers.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this, but I really like old keys.  So of course I had to use this stamp:

I stamped it onto a torn out page from another book (see the text?) glued a bunch of pages together, and cut it out.  Then I put it on some string and added beads, making it as girly as I possibly could.  I really don’t try to do that, but it always seems to happen when I’m doing anything artistic.  Also you can see some of the binding in this shot (yes, I taught 5th-8th graders how to do that.  And they really did, last week.  Looks like I might be able to do this teaching thing after all?)

You like?

I’m off to go tutor the non-art kids in the art class.  It’s actually a lot of fun, some of them have been turning in these papers that they write about visiting an art museum (they get to choose which projects they do) and it’s really funny/interesting to hear what they have to say about paintings they are unfamiliar with, but that I have studied and discussed endlessly and written entire papers about.  Again, I think I can really get into this teaching thing.

Oh and… LOST is on tonight!  Don’t forget.  As if you could.