2 more altered board book spreads

You can click on the picts for a larger view.

My first spread is called forgotten pages in a book. When I went up to the Bead and Button Show, my friend, Harriet, mentioned that she saw the Nick Bantock books at Borders in the Bargain Book area for $2.99 each. Miraculously, I remembered the next time I stopped into Borders. I picked up one book each so that I could use the pictures. I already had these books but did not want to cut those up.

Since I am doing working with the "forgotten" theme. I thought about how these Nick Bantock books are forgotten when they were all the rage a few years back. It was kinda sad that something I liked so much as mailart was now reduced to the bargain section.

I used gel medium as the glue here. I sometimes use mono adhesive but that sometimes comes up at a later point. I don't like to use glue stick that much - personal preference. It is up to you if you like to tear out your images or use a pair of scissors. I do both. Even with the pictures, you can see a little composition going on. There is a dark image in the lower left corner and that leads your eye to the darker image in the upper right-hand corner. Notice the ligtht and dark values. Sorry, that was the for the Collage Composition group.

I purposely sanded the spread since I did it with the covers. I did not sand the silhouette of the man or the eyes themselves so they would stand out. Repetition of one element is good in an altered book. People look for and notice the one thing that you repeat whether it is a word, a stamp, or a color. I did not use regular sand paper since it might take the paper off so you can't see the image. There is a scrapbooking sand paper block that will distress the paper without removing the image itself. Can't remember who it is now. Tim Holtz told me about it way back when. It is probably on my blog somewhere back a couple of years. I cut some edges and then I tore some others.

The second spread is called forgotten innocence. The baby picture just spoke to me. So sad and alone. I put that on the gessoed background first and added the other picture. I used some black acrylic paint for the background so the whole spread had a more B&W thing going. To blend a picture into the background more, take your brush and brush slightly into the edges of the picture. The brush strokes should be moving inward over the edge. You can also blend the edge more by taking a baby wipe and taking some of the edge off of a pict once it is glued down. When the black paint was dry, I used some sanding paper and sanded around the focal points. I did not sand the faces themselves. Notice the contrast here with the darkness of the background and the whiteness of the baby's face. Value-wise, the baby's face is what really stands out. More Collage Composition stuff here.

Comments welcome.