Altered Book 1:2

Well, I've been working in the book some more the past few days. I took out a lot more pages. There were 762 pages and now its down to 108! Most were removed and some just glued together to make thicker pages. I should've taken out more because the book is already too wide!!!

I still have a LOT to do, but have added some painted pages and added text to a couple. I've also added some ribbons and decorative tape.

 The opening cover: I've added some fabric strips and ribbon, as well as some ink splatter.

The same with the next two pages.

I added a few pages of just random mixed colors done with acrylic craft paint.

This one is my favorite set so far...

This one has a poem arranged on one side. The illustrations were part of the book. I just used some more craft paint around them with some decorative tape.

This one has song lyrics on one side and watercolor painting on the other.

So far I like how its coming along! I am getting some more paper crafting goodies for gifts this weekend so I will be able to add more diverse things!

Thanks for looking!!!

Altered Book/ Art Journal

So I've been really inspired to finally try my hand at making an altered art journal! I have been looking at videos and on Pinterest for inspiration and finally have gotten started! I found a couple of old cookbooks from the 1970's that had been sitting in my basement. They are still in really good structural condition and I rarely use cookbooks anymore, so I figured they would make a great base for this sort of project!

I tore out half the pages throughout the book and will most likely need to take out more as I go, but its a good start! I started with the book on the right for myself. The other book I will most likely make into a gift or do some other project later on as it has less pages.

So, I had some hand carved stamps I received from craft swaps, and a thesaurus from the dollar store, and some pre-painted paper, and got started! The opening cover page!

 I may add more to this later on, but this is it so far! It says "the lazy house wife chronicles" with stamps and thesaurus pages. And a beautiful hand carved goddess stamp!

It was titled Secrets of Better Cooking, but I painted over the "Better Cooking" and pasted in some witchy (witch, witchcraft, witchery) terms instead! Also hand carved god and goddess symbol stamps! 

This is the first set of pages that I will fill in with probably a mixture of handwriting and such. I don't have any sort of outline. I'm not nearly that organized lol! I have a few other random painted pages pasted in as well. This is just the start yet.I will update as I work on it!

I would love to see all of your books/pages as well!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Holidays~ Whatever you celebrate!

We have been working hard to get our front room/den finished for the holidays. I finally "called it" and decided to finish after the holidays. We are mostly done with the exception of trim and flooring. The fireplace and brickwork were already in place, we just added new lighting, ceiling, and wall coverings including pine planking. Here are some pictures of the room all decorated for the holidays!!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!!!

Fireplace with Christmas music sounds!

Wood-burned Wood Ornaments

I was recently in a craft swap on Craftster.org . I love doing these organized craft swaps but just hadn't been able to join any for the past couple of years. I have been wanting to make some wood slice ornaments that I've been seeing on Pinterest and other places on the internet. So, when I saw the Ornament Swap, I knew that would be a perfect thing to get me motivated to actually making them!  I had some juniper bushes we had cut down this summer and some cedar logs that were scrap from a nearby log furniture company. I don't like to run circular saws for whatever reason, so I had to enlist my husband to help cut the slices for me. I them sanded them, and since the juniper had had some sort of bug eating the bark, I treated them with some borax solution. Once dry, I sanded and stenciled out my designs. Some designs were from stencils I had purchased, some were traced from coloring books. Others were inspired by designs I had seen online, since I wasn't selling these. I then, wood-burned the patterns and added some watered down acrylic paint to add a little but of color.

I really like how they turned out! I decided to keep a few and give away a few. 

Lily Allen~ Somewhere Only We Know