alicia's final contributions to kim's book: fragments, vestiges & remains

i am pleased to say that i have completed my additions to kim's book, fragments, vestiges and remains and it is currently en route to lisa j. you can read more about it on my blog: http://alteredbits.wordpress.com.

around the glass door on page one (see this post for more details), i've added beeswax and acrylic to the copper tape edging i did to give it an aged look and make it a wee bit less coppery.

another view:

i LOVE how kim's glass bottles with scrolls in them work so well with my page too:

here is that page in its entirety:

it's not really this red in person, but i had a mishap with some red alcohol ink that i was using on a different project. as it turns out, i love it. phew!

the page was a bit top-heavy to i cut off the bottom and added a stitched and embroidered pieces of black linen to the top to even things out. i love the contrast in texture of the different fabrics:

at the very beginning, i wanted to find five elements that i could use one of each in everyone's book so there was that one, simple element that matched in each of my five book contributions. i found these elements in seth apter's etsy shop. thank you seth!

here is the whole completed second page in the book:

and the spread of both pages in the book, all ready to go:

i am just loving the side view of fragments, vestiges and remains!

i forgot to take photos of each of the books within the book: the diary pages behind the photo of della on the "white" page and the history of the portland underground under the trap door on the "black" page. maybe i can con one of the girls into taking some for me. assembling those were part of the most time consuming aspects of the book, but so much fun! the pages are aged with instant coffee and made to look very old. they look pretty darn cool if i do say so myself.

i now have deb's book and have already started in on it: though the eye glass. so check back soon as i'll have images to post.

Round 3 - Debrina's Contribution to Lisa J's book

I've chosen to play with Lisa's title, "Roots Beneath the Layers" to explore the shamanistic beliefs of my European ancestors.  I've chosen Yggdrasil - the World Tree - as my focus for this round.  I first learned about this cosmological structure in Brian Bate's "The Real Middle Earth". 

My pages fold up into a nice neat signature of 12 pieces (see above illustration).  3 is a universally magic number and Yggdrasil comprises of 3 parts.  I want to concentrate on each part separately, so with some witchery stitchery, I have constructed a 3 part layout to my segment of pages.

The first part is the upperworld - Asgard - where light, elvish beings, the gods, goddesses and the deities reside.  If this sounds reminiscent of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, you'd be correct.  Tolkien was fascinated by Saxon mythology and drew his inspiration from their cosmological and mythological constructs.

The book unfolds to reveal the rest of the tree...the underworld (the lower part of the tree is hinted at with the quote above - this is not stuck down yet; nor are these white pages finished...much more layering to do...).

The middle part of Yggdrasil is revealed.  Midgard is the real middle earth, the spiritual world of living beings, such as animals, plants and human beings.  I will be using the pages to the left of the tree to illustrate these realms as I am describing them here.

Finally, Yggdrasil is revealed in its entirety - Niflheim (Hel) are the roots of the tree.  Here is the Underworld, where Nidhogg the dragon sleeps and the dead reside.  Hel (Christian root word for Hell- scuse the pun) is the powerhouse of the subconscious; inhabited by underworld entities that we may fear but where we may also obtain our greatest source of potency.