This is the last set of pages of my art journal.

I was thinking about whether to work on my last entry in my art journal, or whether to start the collage project, and I ended up doing both. 

First I started writing out in ink ideas about what I wanted to try. This was both a way of working through the thought process, and creating a background for the artwork.  After that, I took two pieces of watercolor paper and started my collages. 

The two collages proved overwhelming for the pages, so after I trimmed the card shape out of them, I placed the frames on the pages to see how they looked.  I’d already done the crayon rubbing of the songbird (from the linoblock I cut) and I did a print on tissue paper thinking I’d use it for the other collage.  I like the way they mirror each other, and I like the way that the background text is just barely visible through the tissue paper.

Lesson learned from the art journal project: Art journals are very difficult to photograph.  Also, you can’t sew on any of the pages without sacrificing the watercolor paper background, which means you’re either not sewing, or you’re just gluing finished pieces onto a support.  The journal format also limits materials; you can’t choose anything too thick (poppy seed heads or doll faces) or too sticky (acrylic).  I’ve found this with altered books too.  The book form is really neither 3D or 2D, and has the worst of both worlds.  Of course, with altered books, you get the joy of recycling, so I may deal with the drawbacks and continue my other altered book projects.  Or maybe not.

This is my sister’s art journal. We made a pair of them and took turns doing pages.  She currently has mine, and I have one page left to do in hers.  We might take a while to finish it, as we are in the middle of another art project, the altered book round robin.  Reproduction allowed courtesy of Laura Hill.

This is the altered book that my sister started for our round robin.  It’s quite difficult to photograph them, as they don’t want to lie flat.  I hope I can come up with a better way, maybe a clear acrylic plate holder or something.

I might paint the scene behind the door (the hinges work!) so that there’s some color, but I haven’t decided yet.  I have another month to alter it before I have to send it along. 

The door was extremely difficult, and I had a hard time making everything fit, even after measuring carefully several times.  I made the mullions and the frame out of thin scraps left over from our maple flooring. The glass is a sheet of plexiglass that I trimmed to fit.

After the leather dried, I painted it with acrylic paint.  They do sell dyes for leather, but the guy at Tandy, who was perfectly willing to sell me hundreds of dollars of crap I don’t need, said that acrylic would work just fine.

I first painted the sun red, then painted over it with gold interference paint.  So now it looks gold directly, and red when you see it at an angle.  The moons and oak leaves also have interference paint.  Not shown, gold leaf stars on the spine. 

Here’s the cover I’m doing for my altered book.  I used a piece of vegetable cured leather, 4-5oz.  I wanted to have the look of cord-bound book, so I wrapped plastic over the book (to protect it from water) then wound it with twine.  I got the leather wet and stretched it over the twine to get that design. 

Since I put the water only on the spine, that’s the only part that really stretched. 

When that dried, I painted one side with water and tooled a design into it. 

When that dried, I did the same to the other side. 

Tomorrow, the painted version.

Mistakes I learned from:

When you cut into the leather, it leaves a narrow groove that the paint doesn’t want to go into.  I had the right idea of putting india ink into the groove, but it would have been better had I done that before painting the acrylic.

When I trimmed the leather to match the book, I hadn’t taken the plastic off.  This made the lines a little off, and the leather got cut too short on one side.