Friday, November 12, 2010

Altered Book, Turkey Day Style

The other day when my sister and I were in Anthropologie, we were looking at this adorable little angel ornament.


Ever since, I've decided I wanted to make one myself! So tonight, I headed to Goodwill and bought a few snazzy romance novels, and started my project. During this time, my ADD kicked in. The next thing I knew, I was making a ring and then I started a digital illustration. That's when I realized I'd have to wait a few more weeks until I could actually put my little angel out (I'm doing a bigger one to set out), so I decided to make a turkey instead! He's pretty cute. So here's what I did:

I got a trashy vintage romance novel with discolored pages for a little added character. Then I tore the cover, spine, and back off.




Next, I removed about 15-20 loose pages then folded every page in the book like this.



After I got all the pages folded, I glued the first and last one together then clipped a bunch of the pages together so the gap wouldn't be as big. You may have to do more bending, folding, and clipping to get it exactly how you want it.



For the feathers, I started by folding one of the loose pages in 1/2 vertically, then folded one more time at an angle to make the "feathers" smaller at the bottom and wider at the top.




For the head, I started the same way I folded the feathers then did two more folds like this and glued the loose pieces down so it would be flat:.




On all the folds, it's better to glue the flaps together because it will look much better if the pages aren't all janky. After the feathers are folded and turkey head is ready, glue them accordingly to the turkey body. Gobble, Gobble!

2 comments:

  1. That is so cute! What a great idea! If you don't mind, I'm going to show my students and maybe try one myself.

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  2. Of course! I'm sure there's lots of other things you could try to spruce it up a little. Maybe painting the feathers or adding a little red turkey neck:) Glad you enjoyed it!

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