My latest altered books

So, the other night when I introduced you to the Create Every Day challenge (see button on sidebar), I mentioned that I was off to work on the April challenge for the altered book yahoo group I'm in. The prompt was simply: feather. Here is my response:

The painting was inspired by an evening drive a few weeks ago when I saw an open field, the silouette of a single tree covered in birds, and a beautiful red sky with streaks of gray.

When I connected it to the feather prompt (cuz feathers make me think of birds:), I immediately thought of the contrast between what it seemed to be (a tree with a bunch of black birds) and what it MIGHT be (a tree with a bunch of WHITE birds). So often things are not what they seem, don't you find? And things are not always as black and white as they seem. (Finally found a use for the zebra tape! :) Sometimes those dark nights in life are golden opportunities, with rich, red sunsets. We might see darkness, but behind the darkness is sometimes something wonderful.

Anyway, that's the story behind my response to this month's challenge. I tried to keep it simple -- and I sure had fun! (Well, except when I got a dab of glue on my dried sky, and the paint came off when I wiped it, and I had to get all the paints out to try to fix it, and I was afraid I'd wrecked it . . .)

As I was working on the above project, I realized that I had never photgraphed the journal I made from an old encyclopedia:

Isn't that cover lovely? I did nothing to it -- just kept its original beauty:)

I rather liked the inside cover pages, too. (I'm sure there's a more technical name, but I don't know what it is. Do you?)

I simply removed the covers from the spine and bound pages, then glued the edges down for a finished look. I had hoped to Cerlox bind the actual covers, but they were too thick, so I had to add cardboard extensions. I interspersed a couple of pages from the encyclopedia -- just for fun :) The rest are just blank, white pages with a couple of red cardstock ones thrown in for good measure.

Any thoughts on how I could use this journal?