Jenn, the creative writer in residence, introduced me and the rest of the 2005 Arts Alive creative writing group to altered books in 2005. I’ve made several of my own since then. Whenever I have a book with an amazing cover or compelling illustrations and I don’t know what to do with it, I feel that familiar pull to alter it, turn it into something new.
This was the case in 2012. I’d been holding onto a copy of the children’s book The Wedding Guest for far too long and it was time to do something with it. I never really understood the story, but I was in love with the black-and-white illustrations depicting a beautiful yet eerie (ghost?) woman. I turned this into an illustrated journal/sketchbook for a friend. Here are some photos from that process:
See? She’s eerie.
The last altered book I made was in 2014. Analog: Essays on Science floated around my workplace, unused and forgotten. It was time to make the ideas in that super dated science textbook new again. I hacked up an old edition of an art textbook and combined the two to create the zine, Gala On.
Here’s a making-of shot of the cover!
The original cover! See, I cited my sources.
Have you worked on an altered book project? Leave a comment and tell us all about it!
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