Learning to play

A while ago having realised that I didn't play as a child (always prefering a good book) I decided to explore the idea of altered books. This sounds like a contradiction of ideas as it took some time before I could bring myself to deface a book - this has always been a cardinal sin in my book (no pun intended!) I decided that I could only use books that were otherwise to be sent to the tip. First was the book above which I picked up for 10p. I naively thought I might introduce my daughter to some of the delights within but she was having none of it preferring those girlie interests of talking to her friends and listening to music. Hence the cover - how times have changed!



I moved onto "The Children of Dickens" spurred on by the fact that the pages were starting to fall out. I'm no artist but have always loved colour and paper and decided to just do whatever came into my head.



I played about with collage,



cutting windows



Weaving paper



stamping and my first attempt at painting anything since I was about 8!



Getting rid of angst! This was actually quite good fun



Some pages just reflected things I had done- a trip to Rome



Othrs involved just playing with colours and combining things to give what to me were pleasurable combinatons



Some pages were inspired by the book itself - don't you just love the image of the little boy?



And some were "where I was at at the time"!






This one has a famous paragraph from Dickens on the subject of money. My late father was a retired bank manager and the closely writtn page around the paragraph records the movements of the stock market as recorded from CEEFAX hour by hour as he watched the value of his shares rise and fall each day. (This was his form of relaxation - there was never any hope for me!)



Strange but true. I have a book full of pages like this but I can't throw it away!



Other pages I have circled words to make my own sentence out of what is on the page...



And finally a page using marbled paper that Niobe and I made when she was little!



I haven't done anything with this for a couple of years. There are always so many things to do. But it was great to find uses for some of those bits of paper and ephemera that we collect for no reason other than that we like them. Maybe when there is more time I'll practice more and take lessons in subtlety. In the meantime - pass me that box of stamps will you please?