Sorry for the delay, folks...

Yup, I've been absent for 10 days.  So sorry!  Sunday was Mother's Day, and I was frantically working on finishing my mother's present - an altered book with pictures and stories about my Mom and me and some about my grandmother.  The book was Mothers and Daughters, and I found it in a thrift store.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it would make a great altered book!

I altered it by:

• Taking pages out
• Adding pages (mulberry paper and a transparency)
• Combining pages using adhesive, eyelets, ribbon, and staples
• Cutting a hole in the middle so I could insert items (a postcard and a potholder)
• Covering pages with sponged ink or paper
• Stamping on pages
• Highlighting sections of text from the book by drawing a box around them
• Decoupaging
• Adding pictures, journaling, embellishments, and nostalgia
• and more!

I dug deep into my nostalgia bin and found cards and postcards that Mom had sent me and put some of them in the book.  In 1995 I gave Mom a "Tell me about your life" book that had 365 questions about all aspects of her life.  I copied some of those pages for the Halloween, Vacation, and her "quirky sense of humor" pages.

My Mom really liked it and was surprised at some of the things I remember that she didn't.  I won't show you the entire book, but this week I'll show you some of the different altering techniques, starting at the back of the book.

When I was little we did a handprint project which I found in my nostalgia bin.  I made a copy to keep the original safe:

In case you can't read the poem, it says, "This is to remind you,/ when I've grown so tall,/ That once I was quite little/ and my hands were very small."

You can see a hint on the left side of the picture of what I did:

What I wrote was, "I didn't grow very tall,/ And my hands are still quite small,/ But they have been true/ In making this book for you!"

Note:  Do NOT use stamp ink to do hand prints.  Use paint.  This next picture is after the second scrubbing:

10-15 minutes later, I had a semblance of normal hand color.  It just looked like I clapped for five minutes straight.  Afterward, Fe wanted to get in on the action, too:

That's it for now - hope you've enjoyed this installment of "What Traci was doing when she should have been blogging"!