Altered Book - Marie Antoinette

Altered Book for Round Robin with the theme Marie Antoinette. I really enjoy working with historical themes because I love reading all about the times of the theme. This topic was fascinating and I learned a lot doing the research for these pages.

First spread shows the first portrait on the left of Marie in casual cotton gown and on the right - the repainted portrait after the public uproar - repainted to show her much more "queen-like". The public claimed the first one looked like she was in her underwear!

Pull-out tags tell the story of the portraits.

Spread showing Marie and her Hameau de la Reine - a village she had built on the grounds of Versaille to replicate French  village life. She often went there and dressed as a milk-maid.

Fold-out on the left shows a collection of Marie's shoes, which according to the etiquette of the times, she had 4-6 pairs of shoes made each week.

Sign-In tag

English Garden Art Journal Page for Round Robin

This is the original mock-up in my own book for the current altered book round-robin I am participating in. I wanted to try a mono-chromatic look, which is also a prompt from The Documented Life Project, found here, which is another challenge I am participating in.

To make the background, I gessoed the page, then scraped two colors of pink acrylic craft paint  onto the page with a credit card. Then I stenciled the flowers with white gesso. I stamped various flowers onto the page in varying colors of pink. Then I went over some of the flowers with texture paint, puffy paint or glitter glue. Then I stamped the title and outlined the letters in a darker pink pen. I did put a little green on for the flower stems and leaves. My dear husband pointed out that it really wasn't monochromatic, then. Oh well. It's my first try. I also tried shading some of the flowers and stems, but I wasn't particularly happy with how it turned out, so I abandoned that for the final version.

This is the final version of the book. The book theme I am working in this month is "An English Garden" and will eventually wing its way back to England to its owner. I have one more spread to do for her before I mail the book on to the next participant.

Altered Book Spread - "A is for Apple"

Finished piece for my altered book swap - for a Big Girls Alphabet Book - A is for Apple
 

Below are the step by step photos of the process. I used the tutorial from here to make my background.

Gesso and dots for background,

Added three colors of acrylic paint -

Close up view of texture

Stamping and texture added.

Added apple from water color painting posted here.

More Steampunk Altered Book Pages

Here are the rest of the steampunk pages from my altered book page swap.

"Maps Gone Steampunk" Altered Book Swap

I've been very busy making art over this time I've been off, mostly focused on the Christmas season, but I want to post pictures of my Steampunk book made as a page swap. Here are a few pictures. Will post the rest later.