My favorite entry for the Artisan Award was this Altered Book. It was a true labor of love that required over 100 products and probably over 100 hours! I worked on it for weeks.
I went to the used book store's vintage section and bought an old book. I used Crystal Effects and glued the pages together into blocks. So, it became more like a board book. I then altered each block page. The book depicts the tradition of cooking and baking in my family.
You can get a good sense here how I glued the pages together into blocks. You can also see how full it was and why I needed a ribbon tie closure!
I used some digital elements from MDS. The Handle with care tag was made on MDS.
The first page is about my grandmother. It includes scans of her original handwritten recipes.
More scanned recipes.
This is called a "niche." The pages were very fragile so the SU punches had no trouble going through 10 at atime. I punched half way through, leaving pages behind it in tact so it didn't go all the way through.
The next sections talks about my mom and her cooking.
Another section of my mother's hand written recipes (scanned and printed out.) This niche is in the shape of the top note. I couldn't get it through the Big Shot, so I traced the shape and carefully cut/carved it out with a razor. The insert is from MDS.
The next section is about me learning to cook from both my mom and my grandmother.
This last section talks about how my mother and I continue the tradition by teaching my girls to cook and bake. More scanned recipes from my collection.
And one last niche!
This is the one project that I would give anything to have back. When you enter the Artisan Award, you don't get your projects back. I am Ok with it, but really would love to know what happens to them after convention. To think about this treasure ending up in the land fill makes me want to scream! Surely that's not what happens to them...
This was a fun project even though it was labor intensive. I plan on trying it again in the future and encourage you to do the same. Altered books are actually something they do in the art community. My mom, who is an AP Art teacher, has her student's make an altered book as part of their portfolio. They paint on the blocked sections. They are amazing!
Thanks for all your kind words both here on the blog and at convention. Being an Artisan Finalist really is amazing and takes the sting of not getting this treasure back a little easier to handle. :-)