"Altered Book" - Part 1- Prepping Your Book

 Hi there, 

I hope you are doing well :)  
Victoria is into our 6th Lockdown now, with cases in Melbourne again :(  I am an essential worker and we haven't stopped. 

Thursday, on my way home from work, I went op-shopping locally here in town and found a few goodies for my Junk Journaling stash. I found a few good size books, some doilies, postcards, cards and envelopes, writing sets, a Japanese watercolour book, and music books. I go maybe once a month/6 weeks, or so for a peek and I usually find some cool bits and pieces. 

I have today off and thought I would make a start on a new journal for me.....I found a nice copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I think I have decided to use as my new Personal/Daily journal. I wanted to keep the nice cover and take out some pages. It is a 1984 copy so not precious and the pages had a good thickness to them also.

I have made a couple of altered books before, my latest being a Vintage book. It was a lot of fun to create. 

Craftyrina YouTube Channel

This video from Craftyirena is a good one to follow. You can adjust how many pages to come out with the size of your book and what you want to use it for......There is lots of inspiration over there and on Pinterest...

 With this one, I decided to take out one page in every three. This gives me a pretty good size to play with and takes out about half the pages. This book was about 350 pgs and I have it down to 110. If I need to, as I use it I will take some more out.  This is an important step, as you need to take the strain off the spine of the book. As you add things to it you will see why. The book will bulk up a fair bit if you embellish heavy. With this one, I will be adding flat embellishments.

A few of the pages I will probably turn into pockets to add extra items in but I will decide as I am using it.....I have used a book with sewn and glued pages and I don't think it makes that much difference...

This book measures approx 6 x 9" and has 350 pages and is a good size :)

I start at the front, and I like to leave the first few in. This is up to you and how your book is.  I leave one page, then tear out one with my ruler leaving a few cms so the pages won't fall out. 

The next page is then glued to the one you left, to create the new page. It also covers the tear and tidies it up.

As I go through the book, I think about any of the pages that have pictures and if I want to keep them. I wasn't keen on any in this book as they weren't very well done.  I liked this one at the front, as it was a double and worked well.

A good trick that I have learn't is to use paper clips to hold the pages together, that are going to be glued as you go. This way, I don't have to try and remember how I wanted my pages. You can also see where you might want to add a few pockets here and there.

These pics above,  are to show you how much your book will probably expand when you work in it. The one on the left is my latest vintage altered book I did earlier in the year. As you add photos, ephemera, trims etc it will get chunky. I love a chunky journal and this one is a fave. It took me a month or so to complete it, but I was on a mission :)

I thought it would be good for you to see what sort of items I added to this journal. It is full of vintage cards, trims, doilies, fabric paper, ink, pockets, embellishing,  tuck spots and sewing which add the bulk.

This is another book, that I took the text block out of and will put my own pages back into it. I collaged some pretty napkins over the front of it.  There are so many different ways to make an Altered Book or Junk Journal.........
I hope this post may have intrigued you a little to dive in and make one along with me :)
Stay tuned for the next part of my adventure, where I will glue the pages together and start doing some altering to it :)
Have a great wekend
Hugz K x

 

I basically followed the idea and used a ruler to tear out every second page. This halved the size of the book and it will not break the spine or weaken the book when I add to it.  The two pages on either side will be glued together to form the new page.

Above you can see the number of pages I have torn out and that gives me lots of space to add what I want.  I may even take some more out as I go if needed.