Friday, September 9, 2011

An Altered Book for My Friend, about Her Garden

This is my first altered book and my first project as a Scrapbooker.  I made scrapbooks while growing up, but nothing like what we make today.  Mom showed me an altered book while I was visiting her and I was hooked.  I wanted to make a book about my friends' garden for her birthday.  I selected a book from the early 50's and the binding fell apart to the point that I decided to cover the book in denim so I could hide the repairs.















This page folds out (see following 3 pictures) and I tried to coordinate each set of pages as it unfolds.

It is all about friendship, therefore, it is a friendship garden



I spent a day with my friend, taking pictures of her garden in bloom.  She did not know what I was up to because I told her I wanted the pictures to use as a screensaver.

The colors in her garden deserved to be showcased, so I just added velum between these two pictures to keep them from sticking together.

The dedication page that I include in every book
I love having 3 half pages that coordinate in a series.   Ready...





Set...

Grow!




Oh how I love pockets.



The watermark paper on left page is from an actual picture, as are the tags.

The rabbit in this picture was a playmate to my friends little dog.  The rabbit would sit by the sliding glass door every morning and wait for the dog to come out and they would run around the yard chasing each other.

Not every page turned out as I intended, but they all had meaning, so I kept them.


There were so many great pictures, I added 4 envelope pages to hold the extras.





The picture on the right is also from her grape vine trellis.

This pathway represents all the journeys we have shared over the years as friends..  The pebbles are real.

More fun with nature.  The plants on these pages are all weeds from Oregon.  I glued them in by sealing them with gel medium. 



We worked together and were instrumental in the design of these two collector items.  So I just added a page to commemorate our careers.

The last page is a tribute to my friends wonderful little dog, Thor