Altered Book with mixed media

Let me introduce you to my friend Wanda McCullough. She is a fantastic artist and has actually been published in an international crafts magazine for one of her books similar to these. We met for lunch at Olive Garden yesterday and she had brought her 2 newest creations with her for me to see. Let me just tell you that several folks stopped and had to ooh & ahh over them. She does wonderful work. I asked her if I could take pics and post them and she gave her permission for me to do so. She creates the gorgeous pieces just for herself . Wanda is a wonderful, fun, beautiful, creative, and compassionate person. She also graduated with me from nursing school, but was a semester ahead. Anyway here is one of her altered books. There are several pics to show all the pages and the detail.  Hope you enjoy seeing it as much as I did~

Click on the pictures to see them larger- it's worth the extra time to see the details!

She hand cut these figures out of an art book she bought at one of those fundraising book sales for like 50 cents. Several pictures she uses she got from that book but she also has lots of found objects in here. I told one lady at the restaurant that she could find something in auto zone to use in her art. She just amazes me!

Sorry for the bad pics- we were in Olive Garden so it's the best I could do. Wish you could hold it and feel it. It's an altered Golden Book- you know the kids books- she just did this right over it. She displays them in her home- which is amazing too, BTW. She has such great style.

She'd lifted this up to show the building was printed on acetate and laid over the throw away packaging of a "seven gypsies" scrapbooking product. The beaded around the picture of the lady- she just glued each of those tiny beads around the pic to frame it. She has used clothing tags, fabric remnants, buttons, clips, repurposed jewelry, a  restaurant coaster, various tassles, beads, stamps- you name it- it's proabably in here!

Many of her pages have pull out tags and mini books and trinkets and "journaling" on the back. When she is with you, she explains the story behind the piece of work and why she included this or that and it is so interesting to hear her tell how she comes up with ideas for her art.

that X is actually a rubber stamp taken off the wood block mount and painted, with tiny beads sprinkled over it & I tried to take this next pic from a different angle to show the texture with the beads on it but it didn't show up well. I wish you could actually just hold the book and feel it because I can assure you- these photos do NOT do it justice!

Sorry about the glare on several of the pics. We were inside and I couldn't get a good pic without the flash going off. I tried to darken them a little with photoshop but I am not very good with photoshop yet. I have pics of the other book she brought also but I'll post them a bit later, maybe today or tomorrrow.

Oh, here's Wanda~

 Isn't she pretty!? She was hesitant about taking a picture because she didn't think she looked good. (Crazy woman!) I told her she should make a blog of her own because she would have a ton of followers if she did. But she says she doesn't have time right now. I am going to try to get to her home and take more photos of some of her wonderful creations. She has bodyforms and dollhouses and decorating tricks and all kinds of great ideas! She has won lots of amateur art shows too. I know you can see why I had to share some of her beautiful artwork with you.

Thanks for looking Y'all & as always- be blessed,

Karyl

I am linking to this party at Frou Frou Decor