Altered Board Books
Altered board books are a great idea for a mini album for a small child, which totally makes sense really because children's books for babies and small children are typically board books because they are tough enough to take a bite or two and won't be ripped to bits pieces for at least a year or so.
I made an altered scrapbook for my little girl when she came back from a holiday in New Zealand. She was only 18 months at the time so I wanted to make an album for her to help her remember all her cousins, aunt's, uncles and all the other relatives that she had met along the way. It was really fun and easy to make and used up lots of scrap pieces of paper as well.
Supplies
A board book
Rough sand paper
Patterned paper
Glue
Embellishments
Clean cloth
Scissors, craft knife, ruler etc
Prepare the book
Before we do anything we want to remove the plastic coating that you often find on the pages so that our glue will stick to the pages (or paint if you are painting the page surfaces) Simply take your sand paper and rough up the page surfaces. Sometimes I cheat a little and pull of the coating if it is easy to do. Clean away any dust with a clean slightly damp cloth.
Cover and Embellish
Now simply cover the book with papers of your choice and embellish with photos and pretties. If you prefer to paint the surfaces you might want to apply a couple of coats of gesso first to better prepare the surface.
I pulled out my scrap pieces of paper box for this album, I figured that this album was probably not going to last forever since it was for my rough it up daughter. I also only used paper and no embellishments as Akw was more likely to try and eat and possibly choke on them than admire them at the time. I didn't make a cover for it, I couldn't quite get the foam duck that was stuck to the cover so I just left it on. Akw loved it. We still have this little album, It is not so much an album anymore as it is a pile of album pages. Akw has torn all the pages out of the book now but I think I will just punch a hole in the top corner and thread them on to a book ring and alter her little altered book and make it a tag book.
If you are interested in more ideas and techniques your will some great ones at Altered Book.com.
Altered Board Books
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