altered books

The book gang is thinking small in 2004!

This is our 4th year on the art-e-zine web book cam and it seemed like a good time to try something a little different. We've tried every month, every other month, 2 pages a month, 3 pages a month, big books, tall books, old books, new books, fat books, thin books. In fact, we've altered just about every book we can get our hands on...so we kicked it around with the book gang and thought, yeah, we're ready for another round, but how can we keep it fresh? Postage has gotten out of hand, and there were books in the last group that cost $10-$25 per month to mail. With members across North America, UK and Europe, we needed a solution. To provide a fresh challenge and to keep costs down, the brief was to pick a book 5x7 inches or smaller an weighing less than one lb. Some of the books in this round are a mere 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches! Everyone loves working in these tiny books and we hope that if you too have been working in AB's and want to shake things up a bit, you might like to try a "tiny" bit of a change in your altered book work. Working small can be at the same time both easier and more difficult...easy to fill up the page, but difficult to find that certain teeny tiny something needed to complete that tiny collage...the challenge is to take the time to make the smaller format just as filling as a big old 10 lb. book. Check out the work on the following pages and see what you think.
We think you'll agree, it's fun working small! Shauna Palmer!