"Monochromatic Altered Book Layout" by Angela Sargeant

Many people don’t know this about me but I’m really a hippy at heart. I have a great collection of crystals in all different sizes and shapes and I love to look at and hold them regularly. Because of my passion for crystals, a while ago I started an Altered Book just for crystals – each layout in the book is dedicated to a different type of crystal and I thoroughly enjoy exploring ways to create these pages using my crystals as inspiration. For those of you that are horrified that I have defiled a book, please be assured that I am in fact a bibliophile and that I only ripped into this book as it was a promotional cookbook that I received free and I do have another copy of it.

For this layout I wanted to use a Rose Quartz crystal and love (a major quality of the rose quartz) as my theme and decided that a monochromatic layout would be appropriate. The definition of monochromatic is having one colour in a range of tones – in this case I’ve used various tints and shades of pink. If you’ve never done an Altered Book (or collage) and you’d like to start then using a monochromatic colour scheme is an excellent way to start. Why? Because using a monochromatic colour scheme means you can collage as much as you’d like without the overall effect being messy, random and confusing to the eye. Making your altered book layout or collage monochromatic will help your pages to look more cohesive and pleasing.

When I started this layout I knew I wanted to make a niche in which to place a Rose Quartz crystal in as a feature. To do this I placed a cutting mat 40 pages (20 sheets) under the page I was going to alter and then using a very sharp craft knife I cut out a rectangle through all the pages in the size of the plastic memory box I wanted to insert. If you’re going to do this then make sure you sketch out the size of the box you will be inserting before you cut so that you don’t end up with a niche that’s too big. To make a pretty background for the clear memory box I was using, I simply glued down a square of printed rice paper on the page behind the cut niche. On this layout I wanted to leave the typing of the book showing through so instead of covering it completely with paint as I normally would, I painted both pages on my layout with a light wash of pink Twinkling H20s just to tint the page. I wanted a feminine and light background so after the H20s dried I stamped the lace stamp from Pretty Things III stamp sheet over the whole of the two pages using a pink chalk inkpad. This gave me a pretty background on which to start my altering. Next I took some chalk and loosely wrote the words “love”, “heart” and “healing” over the pages (these words are connected to Rose Quartz crystals). I then grabbed some crimson calligraphy ink and dripped spots all over the layout, lifted up the book and let the ink drip down to signify a bleeding heart. I finished off the background by dragging some crimson calligraphy ink over the perimeter of the pages and after the ink dried I softened the look a bit by rubbing some chalk over it. To make the pages sturdy to work on I made holes down the left and right hand pages going through 4 pages on either side and attached them together using pink eyelets then “sewed” the pages together with some shimmering pink Mizuki cord. I still had some loose pages on the right hand side (remember I cut through 20 sheets) so they were all glued down together then left to dry overnight. Now for the part that I was waiting for! From the beginning I knew that I wanted to entitle the layout “rose quartz” using the fabulous Tubby Chipboard Letters and finally my background was dry so I could get to playing with the chipboard. I wanted a dreamy and sort of translucent look for my title so to start I inked up the letters with a white inkpad and when they were dry I painted them with pink Twinkling H2Os. The reason I inked them in white first was so that I could get a paler and truer pink than I would have if I hadn’t ‘primed’ the chipboard first. Using the Twinkling H2Os also meant that I could get a variegated colour on my letters to give me that dreamy look I wanted. When the letters were dry I then covered them with some dimensional glue to give a glazed look. Before the glue had dried I also sprinkled some clear seed beads over the letters, some of which I had crushed first with a hammer so that they would look like pieces of broken glass.  Once all the chipboard pieces were finished and dried I glued them down onto the altered book.

 

Again, the beauty of using a monochromatic colour scheme is that you can keep adding things without your collage looking overwhelmed, so I cut out a heart shape from some very soft tulle and glued that down on the page under the word “rose”. On top of that heart I added another two smaller hearts, one cut out from pink mulberry paper and another from the same rice paper used for the background of the memory box. After all this was dried I drew some swirls around the large heart using a pink gel pen then went around the whole thing with some pink chalk to soften. I still wanted to highlight the “love” theme so using some dark pink chalk ink I stamped the word “Love” from the Romance stamp sheet in various places over my layout. You’ll also notice that I added a little tag to the right hand side of the layout. I found a price tag which I altered by mixing a little water with the crimson calligraphy ink and then I painting over it and the cord. Once the tag was dried I stamped the word “Love” from the Romance stamp sheet to it and then tied tag to the Mizuki cord. Lastly I placed a rose quartz pendant in the memory box then carefully pushed the memory box into the niche from behind. The memory box already had adhesive panel on the back so that was stuck to the page behind with the rice paper. To finish off I went around the niche with a hot pink marker to define it.