Altered Book Pages for a card

Altered Book Pages for a card by Neil Burley

This month, as you've probably seen, we're sponsored by the fabulous Delicious Doodles - I chose the Pansy and Butterfly from their extensive catalogue for my altered art project.

For this card, I set my page size in MS Word to that of a trimmed old page from a dictionary and an ancient do-it-yourself book, added the digistamp and then printed it three times using my laser printer. The first layer I gesso'd front and back which gives it a translucent chalky background whilst allowing the text to show through, and it also strengthens the paper. I dried it off with my heat tool and then cut round the outside outline.

The next layer I painted the frame pink with Picked Raspberry Distress Ink reinker - I painted the square all the way round, going over the foliage and flowers. Once dry, I sealed both sides of the paper with spray fixative and dried it - again to strengthen the paper. After drying it thoroughly I roughly cut round the inside edge of both sides of the whole image.

The top layer is completed in the same way, the pansies using Dusty Concord and Mustard Seed with Mowed Lawn for the leaves. The butterfly is a mix of Faded Denim, Dusty Concord, Broken China, Victorian Velvet and Worn Lipstick. I used Distress Markers to colour in the smallest areas. The body is dilute Black Soot. After drying thoroughly, I again sealed with spray fixative, dried and then fussy cut out the butterfly and flowers and foliage.

I stuck the gesso layer to the card with matt multi-medium before layering the others using foam pads. I finished it off with a peel off greeting.

A couple of things to note - old book paper is a lot more likely to tear and seems more fragile than new paper, which is why I strengthen with gesso or spray fixative. You can get shading on the flowers/foliage/butterfly by drying the distress inks and then popping another layer of the same colour over the top. I had no problem with the printer feed, though I wonder how successful this would be with an inkjet as the paper might be that much more absorbent.