How to Make an Altered Valentine's Day Book - Part One

29 December

I love to make altered art. I used to do it a lot more and I'd like to start doing it more often again.

Altered books are especially fun because I get to go through all my bits of vintage ephemera, fabric scraps, buttons, etc.

How to Make an Altered Valentine's Day Book - Part One

This is the perfect definition of altered art from Einat Kessler:

"Altered art is a transformation or 'alteration' of ordinary, everyday objects into decorative pieces using a wide variety of different techniques and materials. It describes a way of recycling, and giving new life to all sorts of commonplace and functional (or perhaps even useless) items."

Granted, this kind of art is not for everyone but I love it... it's so carefree, anything goes!

There is a lot of cutting and gluing and even painting with your fingers, it's kind of like being back in grade school again 😊

When you are done, you'll have a beautiful, stuffed book that is so fun to flip through.

Old scrapbooks like this are nice to use because they expand to accommodate all the pages.

I probably picked this up at a garage sale, I've had it for a long time... just waiting for the perfect project!

The first few pages had old recipes glued to the pages.

I like the sort of sloppy or carefree look so I used some hot pink paint and did a very rough square inside the cover and used some foam stamps to stamp "Little love notes" on top of the square using two different fonts for a more haphazard look.

Then you can start layering. This page was torn along the left side so I used some Valentine Washi tape along the tear.

I used a page out of an old ledger and added some hearts created out of different mediums (wood, paper, felt, and wire).

Old photographs are so fun to use in altered books. You can create a story of your own around each one.

For the next two pages, I used some old photos of cute couples.

This one features an old wedding photo. For the background, I used a music sheet for the song "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain and Tennille.

I used some white Gesso and created a light wash over the music sheet, then added the photograph and scraps of lace, paper, stickers, trims, and buttons.

On the next page, I used another old photograph of a girl sitting on her man's lap. The background is painted with white Gesso and spritzed with pink spray mist. Vintage wallpaper, scraps cut from the original papers that were in the scrapbook, paint, a little bouquet of tiny millinery flowers, and "U + ME" with old scrabble tiles to finish it off.

It's fun to create some comical pages too.

The background for this page is from an old book on learning to type!

I'm telling you guys, I have so much stuff in my craft room, wish I had someone nearby who liked this kind of stuff, we could have a ball!

I used some more of the pink paint, a vintage valentine, some red rick-rack, and a scalloped circle punched from old ledger paper. I wrote "Oh please say you'll be mine!" on it.

For this one, the background was painted with pink right over the top of the old clippings that were originally in the book (you can see them peeking through here and there), then I drew a sloppy heart on the page, added some red polka dots with my finger, and this vintage picture (I think it's a high school senior picture) of a very somber looking young man.

I used my small letter stamps and stamped out "You're my Little Kissy Face" on scraps of paper. You can dress up the pictures you use with tiny pieces of trim and a flowers, etc.

I hope you guys enjoyed seeing these pages, and that they've got your creative juices flowing!

Stay tuned for Part Two!

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See Part Two here: How to Make an Altered Valentine's Day Book - Part Two.

Comments by Blogger

NancyDecember 29, 2013
I LOVE IT!!!!!! I get so inspired to do this when I see one but never seem to get around to it!
So back to my painting project I go!
Mom
Vicky HuntDecember 29, 2013
This is super cool! You are so creative. If I lived closer....I'd be over there to "play" in your craft room! You have such awesome stuff! This seems similar to the Smash books I bought my daughter and niece for Christmas.can't wait to see more...:)
Blessings, Vicky