Altered Book Art – Lesson #2

Here are the instructions for my wall sculptures posted HERE.

Start with a funky hardcover book:

Remove the pages from the boards (the front and back cover) by cutting through the end papers (the paper that's glued to the boards):

Divide the pages into sections by marking them with a pencil. I've done three sections of equal size, but you could do whatever size you like and as many sections as you like. If you chose to do six sections then your final sculptures would have a more shallow projection from the wall. You could do different sizes allowing for varying depths of projection coming off the wall as well:

With your utility knife cut down through the pages using your pencil lines as a guide. It takes time, slicing through the pages little-by-little. You could also use scissors if it's easier:

Once you've cut through all of the pages you will then cut through the glued backing paper at the 'spine' to separate the sections:

Fold each of the pages in half, tucking the leading edge in towards the 'spine' of the section. Continue doing this until all of the pages have been folded:

On my first attempt I used a large book (maybe 400 pages) and found that after all of the folding was done the pages were too tight to have a good end result. To remedy that I cut down through the 'spine' and made two folded parts from one. This allowed me to add one more feature to the look whereby I folded every-other page in again so that it were half the size of the others. This gave the final piece a more textured and interesting effect:

Here you can see how the pages of the section right are fuller than I wanted and the section on the left is one that comes from having cut a full section in two. I wanted the final pieces to 'breathe', not be so dense and compact. You could play around with it and see what you come up with…experiment!