One Word Sunday Challenge: Blue 10/14/18

Can’t really resist this one as I live among as much blue as I can….slightly obsessively, my friends and family might tell you.

It is more than a favorite color. Blue truly affects me, inspires me, moves me to action.

I blame this on childhood.

But for today…Here’s an accidental shot I love, taken with new phone while experimenting with the close up feature. And on the right, what I wrote for a post on Altered Books, my theme being Blue.

I’ve posted on Blue so many times, I will put a short list at the bottom of this post.

Sometimes I tell myself I’m photographing birds or clouds or trees, but it was undoubtedly the Blue that got my attention in the first place.

20180708_17591620180226_11122820180101_161147

By the way, we lie about the rain in the Northwest, to keep the crowds from moving here for the above Blue skies.

Can you guess my favorite flower?

20180723_075258

I will snap a shot of anything Blue that catches my eye! (Can you guess what this is?)

20170708_195153

Even my aging feet in their new Blue sandals will make me grab the camera.

20180728_064353

But the Blue that has the most control over me…seriously, I am helpless around this…are my grandson’s eyes!!

Here are the promised “other posts”. I really do hope you enjoy them. It is just a handful of ones containing BLUE!

https://chosenperspectives.com/category/altered-books/

https://chosenperspectives.com/2017/04/23/earth-for-wpc-41817/

https://chosenperspectives.com/2017/05/31/wordlesswednesday-2-53117/

https://chosenperspectives.com/2016/08/19/chosen-perspectives-on-rare-for-wpc/

https://chosenperspectives.com/2018/08/15/lens-artists-a-photo-a-week-blue/

There! That should keep you busy for a while!!

I sure would love to hear what you think.

Blue

Defending Blue: The Altered Book

Recently I responded to a photography challenge from

Lens-Artists-a photo a week-Blue .

Of course, the BLUE is what caught my eye but the whole thing inspired me to write up the short version of a wonderful art experience I had a few years back.

IMG_1599

My long-time friend invited me to join a yearlong project, along with seven artists. (Please notice I did not say seven other artists, as I am maybe an interesting craft person, at best. But I was honored to be in the company of these true artists!!)

The project was rotating Altered Books.

An altered book is a form of mixed media artwork that changes a book from its original form into a different form, altering its appearance and/or meaning. Wikipedia

This was our assignment. Choose a color theme. And then find a book to “alter”…. meaning just that…a book to change in any way you want.

We informed each other of our chosen colors (blue, red, green, orange, pink, brown, purple, yellow) and set off on our 12 month journey with each other.

IMG_1614

Our procedure was to start our own book, work on it for a month or so, and then mail or take it to the next person on the list. Then they would work on our book, in our color, and we would work on the book we received, using that color. The process is brilliant because you are thinking about all your co-artists throughout the year, watching for. and gathering, ideas and supplies for each of the others’ color themed books. (It was cool that our particular group also knew each other so the ideas we had for each book could have personal meaning, as well as working in that person’s color.)

After a month or so, working with the new color, we would mail or take that book to the next person in our rotation, and so on until we had each worked on every other book.

IMG_1613

The thing I loved most was as each new book arrived, it was like opening a birthday gift. Discovering the current month’s color and seeing what the last person had done with it was so exciting. And of course, as we neared the end, we got to see the project almost completed, with  many different interpretations of that color and of each person’s style of “altering”.

Sometimes the words on particular pages were used as a focus for the altering.

IMG_1657

Other times, it was the actual structure of the book (pages glued together and cut out in shapes).

IMG_1636IMG_1637IMG_1640IMG_1641

And there were even some very clever “pop-outs” so when you turned a page, something surprising would happen.

Since BEADS and BUTTONS are my primary craft addiction, I used a lot of those. But because we were emailing like crazy, sharing tips and checking in, we were learning new techniques from each other along the way (photo transferring, different washes, newly discovered glues, cool sticker sources, Exacto knife methods, etc.).

With each book we signed, left a book mark, or in some way identified our contribution.

 

We didn’t return the last book we worked on to its owner. Instead, we brought it to a gathering on a previously planned weekend. We met at a cabin on Hood Canal, so we could open our own books in front of each other. Every book got hours of attention, each page turned, a new gift! We got to talk about what we had done and why, how we had altered, what each color meant to us, etc.

 

And of course, this was a celebration, so there was food and wine and music too!!!

All in all, it was a memorable experience, one I would love to do again in my life. What a fun way it would be to get to know other Bloggers!

I just had another great idea! What if we did a rotating altered photo album. I know, I know, it would be easier online but what if we each found an actual photo album or scrap book, each picked a theme, (trees, babies, sunsets, politics, whatever!!) and then rotated our albums, sharing our own photography in that theme.

Think of the great coffee table book we could each end up with!

Wow.