Paperific and Altered book - last page

What a fabulous day we had yesterday. We went to Docklands, which is as the name suggest a dock and harbour area. It's only been developed recently and is still growing, lots of apartments, cafes and restaurants and boats, some very luxurious.
My husband spent the afternoon taking photos while I went to 'Paperific', a paper, stamp, embellishment, etc show. Needless to say I bought lots of 'stuff'. I met the great Jen Crossley and Julie from Collections, who Jen was demonstrating for. I also bumped into lovely Nicky who attends our altered book Thursday night get together. The photo shows me going through my loot while waiting for my husband to return, he snuck up on me.


As mentioned in the last post, I've come to the end of my current altered book. Lisa asked me in the previous comments post what sort of paper I use in my decorated papers. Well Lisa just about anything I can get my hands on, from good quality watercolour paper to bond sketching paper which is quite thin, this has the advantage that the image usually goes through to the other side, which is useful if I'm using it to make a journal. It's also nice and thin to add to my altered pages.

The photo above shows the first stage. I apply about four different colours of paint (acrylic, watercolour crayons, inks, again whatever I have available, but mainly acrylics) randomly to the two pages, usually keeping one until last for the highlights.



The next stage is to add strips of paper napkins, torn phone book pages or any thin paper. I peel the white backing off the paper napkins to make them more transparent. I use my hand made stamps to stamp images and patterns onto the pages.



I then add hand drawn lines or 'doodles', text, chocolate wrappers or anything that will add to the layers.



Finally I finish off with attachments, images, fabric or strips or cut outs from my decorated papers. Sometimes I give the two pages a wash of a very watery mix to tie the whole thing together. I leave the next two pages blank and work on the two after that, then I join the blank pages together, making the pages thicker. Quite often I come back later and add other things I find that might suit the page, it's a never ending story.