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Altered books - Blending in an image


Although sometimes you want the image that you add to your altered book spread to stand out, with sharply defined edges, most of the time you'd probably like to have it blend in, at least a bit.  I prefer most of my images to look like they actually belong where I've put them, and in order to achieve that effect, you'll need to work both underneath and overtop of them.  

Materials and Tools list from Part One


1. Paint your spread with the basic colors you've chosen.  You don't need to cover everything as you'll be adding more paint later.  Use thin layers of glaze if you'd like to be able to see some of the text when you're done. 

2. Print out you image on thin copy paper, frosted vellum, or even a transparency, depending upon how much text you still want to have visible through it.  I used inkjet vellum.

3. Adhere the image in place and weight pages while it dries to keep it flat. 

4. Add more paint, concentrating around the edges of the image to help blend it into the pages.

5. Add small scraps of a paper that easily frays, like mulberry paper, around the image and over the edges. 

6. Coat your pages with acrylic medium to seal in everything.

7. Add text with black pens.  The brush style Pitt Pen will easily write right over acrylics.    



Part One: Introduction to altered books
Part Two: Mixed text technique
Part Three: Blending in an image
Part Four: Nesting pages
Part Five: Adding tabs
Part Six: Making a frame
Part Seven: Slicing up an image
Part Eight: Foil lettering
Part Nine: Doors and other flaps
Copyright 2010 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.


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Comments

That's a lovely effect. Thanks for the how-to, Cyndi.