Altered Book Pages

Hi Everyone!  I wish you could see my Tree of Life in person because I'm a LOUSY photographer!  I saw my first Tree of Life artwork in San Antonio, Texas, about 6 years ago at an open air market showing Hispanic art.  I immediately fell in love with them!  So full of color and animation - literally full of life.  So I have a couple of birds in mine, as well as a nest.  Then there's the little lady bug bottom left, showing up only as a tiny smudge in the photo :( .  There's a rabbit, and a tiny frog, a seashell, butterflies, a tiny spoon (because children and husbands always leave spoons and such outside), and a little spade that someone was using to dig for lost treasure!  And - roses on the trees - blooming year round!  Now that's a Tree of LIFE!!

Here are a few close-ups!

I love the little bird, swooping down to it's mate and the nest!  And I'm very pleased with the results of the lettering.  Instead of using stencils, I simply took a pair of scissors and free-handed the shapes out of different colored papers.  I glued them to the page, then put a few dots and lines of paint on each one to add dimension, as well as outlining each letter with a black Sharpie marker.  

I retook these photos this morning. I know better than to take photos later in the evening, especially when I'm tired. This is SO much better than yesterday's attempt! Now you can see the little red lady bug I painted in the bottom left. See the little bird on the lower left branch? I literally pinched him off of another piece of something (can't remember what now), but he looks great here on the tree. And isn't it wonderful to have roses blooming year found?

Here are my Isabel pages!  At least it wasn't on the first page! The yellow is construction paper on which Isabel drew two "heart people" and she named them Isabel and Gummy.  I love the way she just comes up with ideas, so I saved the painting for ages, not quite sure what to do with it.  Then I started this book and the rest is history. 

Now for Princess of Zenobia (AKA: Isabel).  I had fun with this and it ended up so completely different from what I initially had in mind.  I borrowed the mosque theme from Violette' as a border, with lots of glitter glue! Then I color copied a recent dance photo of Isabel, and cut it out, pasted it to the center and thought I was through.  No such thing.  I was searching for some kind of a "curtain" that could be held back on the sides, allowing only the princess to show when I came across this sheer piece of fabric with a palm tree on the side.  Perfect! I glued it in place over the entire page, then with Sharper Permanent Black Marker, went over the designs one more time, and also outlined quite a bit with more glitter glue, including the three little buttons on Isabel's dance costume!  Lots of fun this one.  Time consuming yes, but worth it.  I'm very excited to get some more pages done!  And I'm taking advantage of every minute now  because once Laura deploys to Afghanistan and we have Isabel full time for a year, I'll have to do yucky things like cook and clean and cook and clean and......so on to creating art while I can!!  Jan