One Thing Leads to Another

I'm taking a altered book class given by Patty Van Dorin of River Bend Ranch. My first ever class! This class is called Fantasy Folded Altered Book and I highly recommend it to anyone who has never altered a book or has and wants to learn another style. It's easy to follow with many pictures,  Patty is always willing to answer questions and best of all for folks like me, the class is affordable! Here's a link to Patty's blog and a link for the class is on there also. And take a look at patty's wonderful books, journals and assemblage's!
http://ramblingrose.typepad.com/
This is my first altered book. It's coming along and as a first book, it has a definite learning curve to it. Hopefully I'll get faster and better on the next one! I'm just going to show 1 double page layout from the Fantasy Folded Altered Book tonight. I'm showing this because I have a friend who's a author of Fantasy books, a much better writer and story teller than she gives herself credit for!
http://jennakayfrancis.livejournal.com/ and http://www.jennakayfrancis.com/
Now to be honest, I love some Fantasy art and some fantasy things but I don't usually read Fantasy as my every day reading choice, far from it. BUT, Jenna wrote a book ( this book is just 1 of about 30!) that I fell in love with. I was tentative about reading it, but once I opened the book and started on the first page, I was hooked! The name of the book is NITESH, a Fantasy romance with adventure and a touch of the dark,  a White dragon, elves, fairies, and other fantasy people & creatures.
So Back to my picture. As I said, this is a spread in the fantasy Folded altered book and I made it with Jenna and Nitesh on my mind when I found the dragon. The art on the pages doesn't fit the story exactly, and it's a a white dragon heavily shadowed with blue but still, I was thinking of the magnificent Nitesh!

I should say that the art in this altered book is mainly collaged images with a touch of paint , markers, watercolor pencils or caran d'ache crayons. If you click on the pictures they should show a full page view.

So see, one thing leads to another.....

Star

surprise

I had a wonderful surprise today! At least, it was a wondrous surprise find to me and I'm sure to anyone else who's into altered art, altered books, mixed media and so forth. I have a friend who has been cleaning out her closets and doing a general whole house purging. I'm very glad to be on the receiving end of some of this "junk" she's been saving for years ( inherited from parents and other relatives).
Hopefully I'll be able to add pictures so you can see why I'm just so excited.
First was this medium sized suitcase that must weigh 30 pounds or better.

And when I opened it guess what it's filled to the brim with? Vintage magazines, recipe booklets, catalogs and other home leaflets!! Here's a sample:

Now that's just a sampling of those goodies over flowing from the suitcase.

Next was this darling box:

And this treasure box was filled to the top with these!

Yup, it's filled with her old valentines from the 40's and see that little girls hair do with the bobby pin? That's a real bobby pin inserted into the card!

But that's not all, next was this:

A vintage lace veil; her actual 1st communion veil! Along with it was this:

A very nice small lace shawl or scarf! Then lastly but not the least were these goodies in a basket:

A whole handful of keys and 7 or 8 wooden spools!

So, I had planned to do laundry and then head for the art room to do a bit more de-cluttering which always leads to playing in the Fantasy Folded altered book or other art started, BUT now I'm brewing a pot of coffee and intend to sit and flip through these magazines and catalogs!!! What a bright thing to do on a awful gloomy damp Wisconsin day!!

first post

So here comes the scary part, making that first post. I've put it off for several days while setting up the blog and then spent hours wondering how to start and what the heck to say and still wondering why I'm doing this in the first place!

I've given all that some thought and maybe that's where I'll begin after getting this first post out of the way and making sure the world doesn't crash down on me because I dared to send off a post.

So here goes, I'm going to click the publish button.....and then I'm running to hide!

Actually it's near time for GB Packer football and a Nascar race to start and I'm not ready so I have to go.

You'll never know how hard this was!!

Maybe .....maybe, I'll be back tomorrow .

Star