Oh Jane, what are your Wordsworth?

Hello dear friends, especially if you have joined me from Our Creative Corner.  I must say a big THANK YOU for all the lovely comments left on my Memory Book last time - I really appreciated every one of them.  This time the challenge was WORDS and I immediately thought about altered books and the lovely new Oxford Impressions stamp set called Jane's Garden I just bought.  I've wanted to do a folded pages project for ages - there are some great examples out there but they all looked so complex.  Anyway, here's how I turned this charity shop buy:

into this eye-catching piece of artwork:

Are you sitting comfortably?  Then I'll begin.  (Oh, that takes me back.....)

First of all you find the middle of your book and open it flat.  There are only two folds to this pattern and you make them alternately as shown here:

The first fold is just turning the page in towards the spine and creasing it flat.  The second fold turns the top corner and the bottom corner in together until they meet and then pressing them down firmly as shown.  I found it easier to cup the corners in my hands and roll them together until they met before pressing them down to avoid any tears in the page.  Continue in this way, until you get near to the cover and then do the same on the other side and you should end up with the book looking like this:

Be prepared for it taking some time - do a few pages at a time and then do something else to avoid getting bored - it does require a lot of patience to get this far!  I left a few pages at the back and front of the book but I've seen it done right to the covers and then some scrapbooking paper used to add to the background.  Both ways look good.

I then wanted to add some Jane Austen figures to look as though they were emerging from the pages so I stamped them in black on some pale cream card which went well with the book pages.  A little tip here - decide which way your figures are going to face and then make a little tab to fold and glue into the pages so that the images face the right way.  One of my butterflies is done that way and one just sticks out at an angle - learn by my mistakes LOL

I then stamped the sentiment "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need" and stuck that in at the bottom.

The structure is quite firm and stands up really well - no fear of it falling over.  I'm now starting on a more complicated fold so watch out for version 2 of this project appearing on my blog soon.  I do hope you'll give it a go and give some new life to an unloved book.  Don't forget to see what my teamies have been up to for this Words challenge and I hope you get inspired to join us this month at Our Creative Corner.  Thanks so much for popping in and I'd love to hear any comments you have - they make my day.  Margie xx


Sharing this at Any Way You Fold It over at Frilly and Funkie