One of the first things I did when I started my, 'Turning over A New Leaf,' altered book, was write down my initial thoughts about the project in pencil on gesso. My whole purpose was to give myself a creative jumpstart, I find it helpful to experiment with techniques and color stories on a small scale and carry the succesful ideas into larger pieces.
I came back to and away from the cover throughout the process of the whole book, adding cutout leaves, acrylic paint and gesso for texture.
Determined not to be precious, I keep building layers, almost obliterating what came before. I then sketched out a freehand title, traced it onto tissue with a marker pen and used gel medium to attach to the cover.
I then continued to build layers using sienna ink and tissue paper, looking at brush stroke quality and negative space.
Meanwhile as it was a cover I was working on I decided to add some extras!! So I added gesso and acrylic to a clothing tag, popsicle stick and small frame.
The layers kept coming!! text, freetext and doodles and more gesso on my adornments. I then glued the original plastic spine, (gessoed of course!!) to the popsicle stick using wood glue.
Finally I taped a gold leaf into the frame, glued it in place and added some green acrylic blaze blended across the cover. An olive green oil pastel added definition to edges. The tag had green and leaf shaped beads sewn on and was securely knotted and sewn via the top, left binding hole.
