Second ABC round robin exchange #2

Greetings Everyone!

It's high time I showed the art work from our second swap.  This time around I received Lisa's book.  Her theme was Into The Trees...a fairytale of sorts.  Wow-talk about an open ended subject!  Again the problem I had was narrowing down the subject into something that would fit into a spread but still be uniquely my own. As luck would have it I had just finished the book you see above: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  I'll admit that I am enamoured with this book and highly recommend it.  It's got to be one of the most creative books I've read in quite some while. Yes it peculiar.   It is listed as a young adult book but much like the later Harry Potter books doesn't read like one. This book is a mixed Media Artists dream.  It  is filled with amazing and very peculiar vintage photos which the story has been cleverly woven around.
Well since Miss Peregrine home is in the woods and is basically a fairytale it seemed tailor made to be my subject for the theme of Into the Trees.

Well this is my first page.  I wanted to present a simple page that looked like it was from an old book. I have tried to set up my theme by using a quote from the book.  The quote reads "I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen"  
                                                                                                       Ransom Riggs

The next page again I tried to keep simple.  The text on this page is a portion of the story in my own words.
The text reads:
All through my childhood my Grandfather would tell me incredible tales about his life in a Welsh children’s home. This was an enchanted place designed to keep very special children safe from monsters. It was located on an island where the sun shines everyday and nobody ever gets sick or ages. I believed every one of his fantastic tales until the expected adult skepticism took hold, to my parent’s relief. This new found skepticism lasted until my grandfather was murdered by something I can only describe as a monster. But I didn’t believe in monsters!  Monsters were just fairy tales like my grandfather’s stories. But when this letter and pictures were found in my grandfather’s possessions my skepticism started to waver and I knew that I needed to find the truth .

To this page I added the letter, a picture of Miss Peregrine and the little Angel. These are both my own vintage photos that I have been collecting forever. 

The page ends with a line of text that sets up the next spread. It reads:  My search for truth led me to the Welsh Island from my grandfather’s stories and into the trees…

Here are both sides of the spread.  Unfortunately the pages were too large to get a picture of the entire spread in one photo.  But in the first shot you can see Miss Peregrines Home in the back ground and some "peculiars" in the foreground.  The next page shows more "peculiars".  These pictures are a mix of my own collected photos and unusual photos that I found on the web. Please note that I have made my own peculiars and not the ones described and pictured in the book.  As for the peculiars there are: scary clown person, Siamese identical twins, Boy with the removable head, Mouse girl and her dog friend, stone face girl on roller skates with balloon baby on a string.  This spread is totally pieced together from different images. The trees, bushes and grass are all 3-D effects created with Golden's light molding paste.  The collage was then painted to pull it together and make it one piece of art.

The texts reads: The trees began to thin and I came upon a clearing filled with green grass and a house. This was it! The house from my grandfather’s stories just as he described it! Miss Peregrine’s home for Peculiar Children.

I end my submission for Lisa's theme with two more peculiars and another quote directly from the book:

"I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was. "
                                     Ransom Riggs

I thought this quote was particularly true about life.  How many times have we all ignored the small details of our lives?  If we just look closer we will find that those small "seemingly" ordinary things are extraordinary.

Over and out until my next post.

ABC round robin swap #2-first exchange

Greetings Everyone!

I'm sure that you are all waiting breathlessly to know whether or not our local Altered Books Club was really going to participate in another Round Robin Swap.  The answer is Yes! However the group is a little smaller this time around with 6 participants instead of 11 with the addition of a totally new member to the group.
Since many of you seemed to enjoy the last glimpse into our swap I thought that I might blog about this one as well.
For swap #1 I received Maureen's book, the theme of which was :Romance. EEKKK! was my reaction. One of the most difficult things about this theme for me was distilling it down into something manageable.  There's so much you could do with the theme of Romance.  To start the swap off I wanted to so something uniquely me-but unexpected.  That meant no romantic skulls-that would have been just too easy.  And quite frankly the entire group was sure that I would do that.  Instead I decided to deal with my hypocrisy. Yes I am a hypocrite.  Sounds like an AA meeting doesn't it.   Why do I say this you ask?  Because of course I would never stoop to reading bodice rippers and other such trash.  And its true that I generally don't read that type of book.  They contain just a touch too much romance for me.  But as I got to looking around at all my favorite books and movies I realized that most of them deal with the subject of romance.  In fact I have and entire book of nothing but romantic movies. Movies that my husband likes to call woman trash (even though you will very often find his butt parked on the couch watching them with me!) I won't even go into the number of times I have watched these movies or reread the books.  Suffice it to say that I practically know them all by heart!
After admitting my weakness I was ready to move on and suddenly I knew what I wanted to add in my spread or spreads as it turned out. I decided to stay with a very simple paper collage style for this one.

One common theme in all of the movies and books I mentioned is that they might as well start out: Once upon a time.  You can see my Once upon a time collage above.  I included one of my favorite Preraphelite images called The Bride.   I thought her appropriate.

Of course every Romance should end with Happily Ever After.  In this collage I made a little niche. Don't be fooled not only am I Jonesing for Happily Ever After...

What I am really waiting for in every book and movie is " The Kiss".  In the niche I have created a shrine to the kiss.  I sculpted a small iconic glass slipper and put it in there as well.

But I didn't stop there!  In my second spread I show a beautiful princess dreaming (that's of course what I wanted to be as a child until reality imposed itself on me) and on the other is another kiss (sigh) with a pocket containing two booklets listing a few of my favorite romantic movies and books.  Just in case the others have missed some of them of course!

And just in case some of the group was a little too serious or panting too heavily,  I decided to inject my own personal bit of humour.

Click on this picture to enlarge it and you will see that this woman just does not look comfortable on that horse. I believe that this is because she is dealing with an age old woman's problem. Come on guys it couldn't have been much different back then!

Connie-over and out until next time!