Fantastic Assemblage

As our book wends its way eastward from Elena to Diana, it is so exciting to be able to get a glimpse of its development. In many round robins, Images of the work in progress are not shared because each player has a book in the race and everyone wants the owner of the book to be surprised by the finished book. In this case, the finished book will belong to the Etsy buyer who purchases it and the funds will go to the New Orleans Public Libraries. We want people to see each phase of the work, and to learn about the processes and the artists involved.

Elena's pages touch on some absolutely beautiful themes. Hopefully, she'll be able to comment some on this entry to talk about her process and inspiration.

For those of you who might be interested in supporting the New Orleans Public Libraries, they have several fundraising efforts going at the moment. There is a donations FAQ available at their website.

I also thought that I would post some information for those visitors to the blog who are interested in learning more about Altered Books. There are several Yahoo!Groups for altered books including AlteredBooks@YahooGroups which is one of the best altered books resources available. The knowledgebase of the list is amazing and the files area of the list is a treasure trove of techniques, resources and inspiration.

Another resource is the International Society of Altered Book Artists. ISABA is a guild with a newsletter, a traveling collection and a fabulous member's gallery. A look through the list of ISABA members is like browsing through a who's who of contemporary collage artists.

I'm looking forward to seeing more pages as they're completed and to sharing them here as they come in. I'd love to hear feedback, not only from the participants in the project but from visitors to the blog as well.