How To Prepare and Choose a Book for Art Journaling or Altered Books

I walk you through my process of choosing a good sturdy book to use as an art journal. Listen to me ramble for 11 minutes about what books are right for water media and choices of paper to look for or avoid.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• art journal
• altered books
• choose
• how to
• art
• alter
• mmixed-media

[dragonflylogan]

Where do you find your books mostly?

Lori

[GulfSpr1te]

@dragonflylogan Thrift stores and yard sales.

[SaraEnDippity]

and all of your videos show pages that look substantial! I think I might be stressing myself out about this a little too much and needlessly, to be honest! (Thank you again!)

[GulfSpr1te]

@SaraEnDippity A good way to learn what pages work best for mixed-media is to test. Find a few books (you can usually get them for mere change) that have different types of paper. take them home and rip out a few pages. Then set about altering the pages as you would in your art journal/ altered book. If they wrinkle easily when you add paint or water then you can avoid that type of paper when looking for books.

My favorite book so far was an old book from Germany that had thick textured pages!

[SaraEnDippity]

thank you so much for this (and for pointing me in this direction with my last question!). I'm still at a loss regarding the page thickness - or did I not pay good enough attention here? :D are you choosing books (after checking the binding on them) with a certain weight/feel to the pages? I have some books I've gotten from thrift stores (to cut up and collage with) that I was looking through, but all of those pages just seem too thin to take wet media without falling apart. (eeps, cont.)

[GulfSpr1te]

@SaraEnDippity Yes I choose the book based on a) the right binding, b) pages that feel porous (not shiny or slick), c) pages that feel heavier then regular paper and d) size of the book as I like a larger format

[MissBooksmith]

Thank you for such a good informative video, also I like to pay a compliement when I can and so: you have beautiful hands and nails. Namaste.

[rsingr100]

I enjoyed this video! I am new at altered books and this helped me so much! Thank you!

[RedDogGirl67]

Seriously - the best video ever to get someone started on altering a book. I keep coming back to this video for reference. I can't wait to find a book to alter! Thanks!!

[GulfSpr1te]

@cheerbear7 glad it was helpful!