Tattoo themed altered book....

Last night was weird.

After I heard the news about Luc, I kind of just sat there staring into space for hours. And cried a lot. And wondered why it had hit me so hard (I still can't really answer that one). But the upshot was, I didn't move off the sofa for hours and hours.

It got to about half past one and I got up and stretched, and figured I ought to go to bed.

But then I caught my half finished altered book (to be used for a tattoo themed circle journal round robin) out of the corner of my eye.... and decided I didn't want to go to bed having achieved nothing but a lot of weeping and wailing.

So I stayed up half the night and got it finished. And here it is :)



This started life as a book on the Life of Wellington, dated 1885. Don't worry - I did check with the antiquarian book dealer I bought it from that it isn't in the slightest bit valuable. The fact he sold it to me for £2.50 was a big hint that it doesn't belong in the Smithsonian. So I don't feel too guilty for covering up the tatty but pretty cover with pictures torn out of tattoo magazines :)



Once the book was totally covered with magazine images, I put on a thin layer of gesso (scraped on with an old credit card), gave the gesso a bit of colour with distress inks, and then sprayed the whole thing with matte acrylic sealer.

A couple more magazine images were added (not gesso'd over this time) - and some swallows (Hambly rub ons).

Next, a niche was cut in the cover of the book. And behind the niche, the title was added (freehanded in sharpie onto a gesso'd book page). The niche borders were covered with a stitched black leather frame (and matching corners were added to the corners of the front and back book covers).









Finally, I added some tattoo themed charms to the spine, hung on black leather cord:
A swallow to represent old school tattoos ; a tribal charm for, well, tribal :) ; a skull and crossbones for the whole skulls and demons badass biker type style ; an angel's wing for religious and fantasy tats ; and a piece of celtic knotwork for the whole celtic style which sadly doesn't seem to be as popular as it was when I first started getting inked 20 odd years ago...



That's it. Oh - apart from the 7 Gypsies book belt. I bought this as I figured the book will end up pretty fat by the time everyone has finished playing in it - and the book belt will help it stay closed-ish. And it matches the leather embellishments used on the book cover, which is a lucky coincidence :)