Alter Spread

We've reached lesson 6 of the Collage Coterie Workshop already and this lesson was dedicated to Altered Books as well as to using glazes and embellishments. I stopped myself from starting an Altered Book as I already have too much on my hands at the moment so that will have to wait till some future time.

But I did want to experiment with the glazes as well as make a spread in respond to our prompt for this lesson which was: Alter!

As soon as I read it the Spakespearean quotation: "Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds" came to mind and that was my guideline for the pages I made. I used a different sketchbook (size 4 1/2" x 8 1/4") as I did not want to make it in my vintage gluebook which is very subdued in colourway and I would like to keep it that way.

I used vintage pages and they were carefully selected to go with the quote. On the right hand side you will see words like: "girl whom I had known was dead" as well as "a sensitive, impressionable little creature" to accompany the lady. On the left page the images go with the story and there is text to go with the gentleman such as "the Kind in his usual dress" and "his face and attitude". Both gentleman and lady come in the shape of a clear tape transfer.

These pages were glazed using Goldon fluid acrylics with the final layer being thinned down white gesso. I added vintage music, and pieces of a vintage map. I punched out a heart shape from a vintage book and added a modern self-adhesive silver dot on top of the heart.

Changes in the Appearance Spread

I have been lagging behind a bit with the Collage Coterie Class due to my mother's visit but I did manage to download our latest lesson on Sunday and today, after taking my mother to the airport, I sat in the sun with my vintage materials, scissors and a gluestick to make another spread in my Vintage Gluebook.

The lesson instructions included how to make a clear tape transfer and you'll have seen those before on my art as I have been using them for a long time. But using a vintage image to make a clear transfer was new to me as I did not realize that it would still work with the ink, even after such a long time.

The transfer can be seen on the left and is of an emperor of Austria from a vintage book, published in the early 1900's. Everything else on this spread is true vintage apart from the lovely lady. She came from one of the cards given to me by my brother-in-law, who sells postcards on Ebay. She is a beautiful girl and I did not want to damage the card itself so used a copy instead. I also coloured her in with chalks and outlined her with brown NeoColorII crayons. I rubbed the line with a wet finger to spread it about a bit. The stamp was the last item I added to the spread.

Three is Company

Despite a lovely day outing with my mother I still found some time this morning to keep up with the Collage Coterie class. Our excellent teacher, Mary Green, prompted us to use three in some way and I selected to make another spread in my Vintage Gluebook.

Everything on the spread is genuine vintage. And as you can see I've used 3 figures (the one on the right is Bismarck!), and also 3 postage stamps. I could not help myself and just wanted to add the text which I found in a vintage quotation book and which reads: Three is Company.

Wandersmann Spread

Lesson no 3 in our wonderful Collage Coterie Class was all about shapes in collage and I incorporated 2 different shapes in my spread, triangles and ovals. Everything on this spread (made in my Vintage Gluebook) is true vintage (no copies at all!). The triangles come in the shape of two cathedral spires, the one on the right from pre-war Germany and the one of the left from St. Petersburg at approx. the same time. The ladies in the ovals are the Tsarina of Russia on the right and a German empress on the left. I also added Neocolor Pastel crayons around the ladies to integrate them into their respective pages, using orange, black and white crayons and my wet fingers. Wandersmann means Wanderer, I think. I can't locate my German-English dictionary at the moment but am pretty confident about the translation.

Talking about shapes, there were some beautiful shapes to be admired in the garden we visited yesterday. On the lawn the piece de resistance was an enormous Cedar of Lebanon tree. Even the name sounds mysterious and Eastern and the tree was so impressive. Equally enormous as the tree were its cones, simply huge compared to those of the average evergreen. And an oval!! Perhaps that's what inspired the spread seen above. And the tree could be seen as a triangle.

One Great Secret

And it's up to you to guess what the secret is. As almost always I sort of wrote a story in my head when I made this collage but I like to leave the interpretation of the art up to each individual viewer! My brain can be a cesspool from time to time and the story I came up with was pretty rude!

We're already up to Lesson 2 in the Collage Coterie Class and this one was all about colour and contrast and our prompt was to be Inspired by Nature.

I took this perhaps a bit more literal than Mary Green, our teacher, meant it and for those of you of a tender disposition, a word of warning: yes, there is some nudity in this spread, although of a very subtle nature. I bought the engraving this figure was taken from on Ebay for no other reason than that I just had to have it. It's beautiful! Mary demonstrated to us how to use chalks and I knew I had some somewhere. I re-acquainted myself with the contents of my painting supply cupboard and there they were. These were pearl pastels and suited my image wonderfully well. Although this spread is for the Collage Coterie class , I actually made it in my Vintage Gluebook as everything on it is either true vintage or photocopied from true vintage material.

When I was finished layering and glueing everything in I had a look to see if it all worked together and to my intense astonishment discovered the word Peebles on the map underneath the semi-nude figure on the left (it's sort of underneath the fence). I live in Peeblesshire and only about 12 miles away from Peebles. It's where my quilt exhibition will be next year. What are the chances of this happening? I reckon it must be more than one million to one. The universe simply gifted me with this synchronicity and I am truely grateful. I then also spotted the word Milestone virtually under the feet of the same figure and I could only wonder at the great secret of it all! I think the vintage map is of North and South Dakota.

The nature inspiration can also be found in the proliferation of roses, both on the vintage wallpaper I used as background on both pages and in the roses on the Holy Card.

Collage Coterie Class starts

When I saw that Mary Green, the teacher for the Vintage Gluebook Class I did back in May had another class on offer, I barely even checked what it was about before clicking to pay for it.

It's called Collage Coterie (you'll see a button for it in the sidebar as well) and needless to say it's all about collage. It started yesterday and one of the lovely features is that Mary gives us a creative Prompt at the end of each lesson. For lesson 1 it was: Small Packages. The lesson also gave information about using gesso on vintage papers and Mary used an ATC for her example.

So combining all those elements I started on an ATC too and made the background with vintage papers and gesso as per Mary's instructions. Then I started thinking about small packages and rummaging through my box of vintage images and before too long I came across an image with donkeys carrying heavy loads, the opposite of small packages really. But I took it on board and added the donkeys as shown. The next thing I wanted to do was add some text along the line of "the load is too heavy" or something to that effect. I looked in the index of my vintage book of quotations and what I eventually came up with was : "a load of immortality". Not exactly a small package but it very much suited my donkeys! A vintage postage stamp picks up the colour of the vintage wallpaper used in the background. For some reason this ATC is so pleasing to me! Sometimes it all comes together like clockwork and those days are to be treasured!

Letters from Herr Spread

Before starting my next online class with Mary Green (called Collage Coterie and you can sign up here!) I wanted to do another spread in my Vintage Gluebook using some of the items acquired at the Antiques Fair. I positioned one of the birds I uploaded a few posts ago on the right-hand page, and used as background a green end-paper found in one of my vintage book, accompanied by a piece of vintage wallpaper and a detail of a vintage map I also picked up (for only £1!). It's a map of Brigthton and environments and I have used the picture on the front of the map on the left-hand side, both as copies, rather than the original. I added more of the same wallpaper as well as German vintage text and some of my vintage stamps. Would you believe I bought another almost full stamp album? If you read this blog regularly this will no doubt not surprise you too much!! I definitely feel that I'm going to dedicate a sketchbook to stamps before too long.

The final touch was the text: Letter from Herr to pull it all together.