First, I pasted the edges of the pages together with acrylic gel medium, and cut a niche into the papers. Well, before the first I perused the book and tore out pages with great drawings; I found pictures of architecture - things we have made - bridges, houses, arch and column styles. I cut these up and pasted them randomly over the inside of the end pages and inside the niche.
Then, with the paper that I had cut from the book I rolled some beads. Ever done that? Over a knitting needle or toothpick roll evenly cut strips of paper until you get a bead of the heft that you like. You can use triangles and get a semblance of round-ish bead, but I wanted tubular beads.
There are the strips with glue on the ends to hold the many strips together, and an experiment with blue acrylic paint and gel medium to see if I could make the blue transparent, and the beads lined up with their pearl and Swarovski crystal spacers. I had also pasted tiny pictures of the history of furniture styles, exampled in chairs over the ages, onto the beads - which I wanted to see through the blue paint.Below, here, I had painted the beads and was drying them - and in the process invented an amazing Bead Drying Rack! I tucked a T-pin through the bead and stuck it into a piece of blue foam insulation board. (I usually paint fabric on these boards, so they are paint ridden anyway.) They let the beads spin around while I painted them, left them open to the air on all sides and I could move the board into a safe place for the hours that they would take to dry. I am so pleased.
Here is a picture of the back end paper - a view of the Pacific Ocean and its encircling land masses - the front end paper has a map of the Atlantic.
And here is the end result! 
You can go here to get to the Rockport, (Maine) Library website for the Out Of Bounds Altered Book Show http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/OutofBoundsAlteredBookProject.php or just come to the Rockport Opera House on Friday evening, Saturday or Sunday to see the show! See you there! R
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2 comments:
What an awesome idea, to combine two things that I love, books and jewelry. At first I cringed at the thought of altering a book, but I know that I have some old books around here that are not really fit to pass to someone else and yet I can't bear to put them in the trash....so this would be a great idea. Very inventive of you with the drying rack. I have never actually tried to make the paper beads because I always thought that they wouldn't look good, but you have proven that they can be very very pretty. Good job! Angela
oh I want to leave a comment...but have so much trouble trying to do so on e pages. I am a near neighbor of yours and included in the Art In A Carton group...
http://shewolfnative2.com
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