Weeta's surprise

My best friend is coming over tonight. She just finished work and should be here in an hour or so. She lives 40 miles away, so we see each other only a couple times a month. We used to live together, though, so we're pretty informal.

I made her something, which I hope will be ready for her birthday in August. She's working on her master's degree in art therapy, and she's a nature lover like I am. So I made her a Bookmooch Journal, and called it Leaves. It's going around now, and every person will add their own take on the idea of Leaves.

It's not really a journal; it's an altered book. This'll be my first time doing an altered book, so this doesn't look as professional as what you may have seen before from artists who do altered books. I'm hoping the Bookmooch people who get it will snazz it up a bit. It was a French picture book from the sixties. I chose it because there were leaves on the cover, though it's not nature-themed at all and the images include some annoying ethnic stereotypes I hope people will cover up, because that'll really bug Weeta.

Here's the cover:




Below are the first two pages. The figure on the right was a man sitting under a tree, but I cut up a photo of Weeta to make a sort of collage of her. I'm afraid she might not like it, since it's not very attractive; the features aren't put together as nicely as hers are, because they were bigger than the room allowed by the figure's head. The green stuff is ripped up handmade paper I bought from etsy. I originally had a photo of myself, with a balloon coming out of my mouth saying something to Weeta, but it made me uncomfortable. It seemed egotistical or something to put myself into Weeta's book.





I imagine that there'll be other images of it available soon. I think the BM Journal people have a flicker page just for the journals. I can't wait to see what other people do to it.