Product Details
The Altered Book Scrapbook

The Altered Book Scrapbook
By Susan Ure

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Product Description

Combine two of the hottest trends in crafts—altered books and scrapbooking—and you get an exciting technique that’s sure to be a hit. Just take an existing volume and add embellishments until it’s transformed into your own personal scrapbook. Susan Ure—a frequent guest on The Christopher Lowell Show—shows exactly how it’s done, from choosing the right book to alter to creating a pleasing composition. Work from a variety of artists provides inspiration and ideas for materials and techniques—including metal, paper and cloth collage, lace, and beads. A sense of playfulness and creativity are all that’s needed to get great results.  

 

         

Susan Ure has authored several books, including 10-Minute Decorating, Scrapbooking Your Vacations, and The Portable Crafter: Beading, and has appeared on The Christopher Lowell Show.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #860179 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-05-28
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 184 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
The most innovative and magical side of recycling is one that pays homage to the original form while crafting an entirely new medium/item. Such is the case with artist-author (The Portable Crafter: Beading, 2004, et al.) Ure, who reinvents the book into a memory scrapbook. Here, artists contribute 13 different creations, each with annotations, inspirational notes, and one featured technique, whether fashioning Victorian-style postcards or sewing a quilted bookbag for a commissioned project. Variety--and sentiment--rule; the author, for instance, selects her grandmother's teaching textbook to truly reflect her relative's life, complete with marriage license and always-young sepia photographs. It is difficult, these days, to recommend a more personal craft--and one that can take on a life of its own . . and others. Look no further than Jane Austen for the last word on scrapbooking: "If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory." Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

See ENTIRE scrapbooks -5
what a pleasure to see more than just a few pages from what we know are entire volumes. One advantage of that for scrapbookers looking for inspiration is it allows us to see repeating motifs from page to page of each scrapbook or journal shown, though the subjects and themes of the pages change throughout each of those books. Cutting edge "art journal" style pages are in abundance, with some more traditional takes as well, displaying a plethora of techniques and plenty of tips, too.
Included in this nice hard bound volume is the work of some prolific scrapbook/journalers including Lisa Hoffman, Karenann Young, Lisa Cook and Nicole Landy. Most of the photos and details are printed BIG so we can really check out what's goin' on.

More for the scrapbooker than the art journaler3
After eagerly awaiting publication of this book, I didn't end up buying it after all. The sample pages had a garish, repetitive, slapped-together look to my eye. Scrapbooking technique books and magazines like this one emphasize page design and novelty so heavily that the photos and ephemera within it almost get lost, making it too self-consciously about the craft rather than the content.

I confess that my own interest is more towards altered books than scrapbooking, and the scrapbooking titles I do enjoy are more towards the sensibility in Scrap City: Scrapbooking for Urban Divas and Small Town Rebels. Mainly, though, the samples and techniques have to appeal to my eye, and those in "The Altered Book Scrapbook" didn't, unfortunately.

I'd hoped for more4
I bought this hoping for a little guidance in a project I'm trying to start. I have read Altered Book Collage, Altered Books, Collaborative Journals, and Other Adventures in Bookmaking and of course Altered Books Workshop: 18 Creative Techniques for Self-Expression. While those books do a pretty good job with showing lots of examples and techniques, the focus a lot more on the altered book as an art piece, in and of itself, rather than something that can be used to tell a story through art. The Altered Book Scrapbook gives good instruction for recreating the pictured books, but very little advice on organization and that's what I was looking for.

All the books about altered book that I have seen overlook this. "Just dive in!" they urge. "If you don't like the results, tear out that page and start over!" My approach to creation is just not that organic and loose. I want a plan, I prefer an outline, I need organization, and if you're like me, this book won't help you, either. On the other hand, it will show you clearly how to make your own versions of the pictured books, with lists of materials needed and instructions.