Altered Book

Nearly all the projects I have been doing on this blog have been crafts that I have started and finished in one day.  Today's project is not one of those, it is the start of one that I plan to carry out over time.  The project is to be an altered book.  I haven't decided on the type of book I'm going to make it into yet but I will be working that out as I go along.

The book I will be altering is this one:

It's called Arthur Ranyards Training by Emma Leslie

And it only has one illustration in it. This one:

I have never altered a book before but fancied doing so as I have seen some really interesting examples on other blogs.  This site (link also in my side panel at the bottom) has some excellent instructions on how to alter books and I followed these to show me how to make a start. 

Before I show you, let me point out that I have had difficulty finding a book to use for this project because a little while ago I bought one that I thought was suitable.  It was a big book called 'Fifty Great Disasters and Tragedies that Shook the World', very nice and cheery, eh?  The trouble was, before I could bring myself to do anything to it, I took a look at the pages, started to read... and it turned out to be fascinating!  I couldn't possibly start destroying a book that is actually worth reading so it was back to the drawing board.  I got another one from a charity shop and that looked quite good too...   And then I read the instructions and it said that the book needs to be an old book that is sewn not glued together. That is because it will start to fall apart when you alter it if it has been glued together, not sewn.  So I went on another hunt....

And today I found this book ('Arthur Ranyard's Training')  It doesn't look that interesting honest!  It did have this inscription on the front page though:

(Which I will be keeping)

But, remember there are hundreds, nay millions of books like this in the world so remember this if you decide to do the same as me, making a book that is readable and interesting from one that isn't.  Trust me, the pictures I have shown you so far are the only interesting things about this book!  It's not valuable either, it can't be, it only cost me 99p!

So, (now those of a nervous disposition, look away now!) the first stage in altering this book was to take out some of the back pages so that it can handle the bulky embellishments that will be added.  You do that by tearing them out against a ruler about a half an inch from the binding:

..and that is where I am at.  Until the next time...

Thanks for reading this really long post,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave