Altered Book Journal Page

Let me start by saying anything... and I mean anything can be used for an altered book journal! This is what makes this project so much fun and so versatile. Every book is different, every page is different, and every material is different. The purpose of an "altered book" is making an old book into a new piece of art. There are many types of altered books, but for this project, we are beginning an altered book "journal". A journal can be used as a "smash book" for travel or random memories or can be used for a literal journal to write in. There are many possibilities.

​I did this journal page spread for one of my classes. This was a little tricky as I had to come up with something that we could all do together in our own books but something that could get everyone started and get those creative gears moving! The page above is what I came up with. It is something very simple and uses minimal supplies. We could've gone crazy and used paints, textures, inks, stamps, stickers, etc. but I kept it simple for an easy clean up and to also show that you don't need anything fancy for this type of project!

Supplies:

• Paper (scrapbook and scrap)
• Printed Clip Art image
• Printed text in a fun font
• Ribbon
• Elmer's Glue
• Scrapbooking flowers
• Hot Glue Gun
• Xacto Knife

​1. First off, let's talk about picking our book. If you can find something with "sewn" pages, that's the way to go! The modern glued pages are terrible for an altered book project! They are too flimsy and as you cut away more pages it loses its stability and could fall apart! These photos show what a sewn spine looks like verses a glued spine.

2. To start with, we need to "prep" our book. Everybody goes about this in different ways, but, for me, I go through and remove pages throughout the book. The more "stuff" you want to add to your book = the more pages you want to cut out. I use an Xacto knife to cut out a page. Then flip a couple of pages and cut another out. Keep going until you feel happy, at least for the time being. Make sure there are pages to the right and left of the cut section to glue together and cover up the cut page. You'll end up with quite a few lose pages (you could save these for future projects!).

3. Once you are done cutting out pages throughout the book, you are ready to start gluing. As mentioned above, glue the pages to the left and right of the cut together, hiding that cut line. I use Mod Podge for this, putting it on in an even, thin layer. You can always come back and add more if the corners aren't glued down after it dries. 

4. The next step is where things start becoming "optional". What I like to do to "prep" a page, is to paint a layer of white gesso on the spread. Gesso gives a nice foundation for the rest of the items you will add. It also slightly covers the words or "greys" them out so you can still see them but you can also see your work! The page we are doing is pretty bare, you can still see the Gesso effect in the very first image on this post.  

5. For this step, gather the supplies/items you want to use for your page.

I want to go over what I used for mine. The "Let your soul grow" quote was printed on a regular printer on antiqued paper. The bike was also printed on the same printer on regular copy paper. I tore some scrapbook paper to fit into the corners of the page (if you tear away/toward you = different results!). I had some spare scrapbooking flowers to use up and I also used some pieces of ribbon. Remember, I tried to keep this page spread very easy and user friendly!

6. All I did to finish this page spread up was glue! First, I arranged everything on the pages to figure out where I wanted it all to go. Once I was good with it all I glued everything down with a thin layer of Elmer's Glue, you could use Mod Podge instead. I also used the hot glue gun to glue the ribbon and the flowers down. But that was it! 

​This was a pretty simple page. But you could really get crazy and do pages like the examples below! Happy Journaling!