Altered Book - Lesson 4 - the sticky stuff!

Four our latest lesson, Elizabeth set us playing with different glues . Good job we get two weeks per lesson to produce our homework - which I confess isn't complete (I blame Tim Holtz's Creative Chemistry online class which I spent all weekend doing!)

Actually I don't - I only have myself to blame.  anyhow, Elizabeth asked us to try sticking several of our pages together with different types of glues from our stash and document which we found best and which not. Her recommended ones to try were glue stick, gel medium, mod podge if we had it, pva (white glue) and gesso.

Here are my results!

 I had to take them close in so you could see the tags for our results, which I attached with Tim's Tiny Attacher.  I've just edged the tags with some distress ink so they show up on the plain pages.

I thought this would be best of all, but the Prittstick wins!

 My tacky (pva) glue is very old and I had to prise it out of the bottle - breaking two coffee stirrers in the process. I should have found an old knife...or a credit card as Elizabeth recommended!! (memo to self - listen to the teacher!)

I didn't realise I had any of this - and as the tag says - it stinks!! And the smell lingers. Not a fan, it's gone back in the box to be forgotten again!

I was dubious about gesso working - it's actually less wrinkly now than it looks here! I didn't put enough on the righthand part of the page so had to add some more and press the pages stuck again. Good job it was the outer edge that I under-glued!!

The gesso I used here I did buy specially - what I've been using as gesso in my journal isn't labelled as such but is called "artists' quality background colour" though it does say it can be used as gesso.  My class gesso came from The Works and was £4.99 for a 500ml tub (and I don't much like the smell of that either!)

Then Elizabeth asked us to make a spread of a double page with gesso as glue and sealer if required -  I found that quite helpful as it aided the sticking process!

As you can see  I had to hold the book open in one hand to keep it flat and take the photo with the other - good job I don't use my SLR for my blog photos I'd never have managed... Anyhow, I used the leftover sheet of paper from the front cover and a clock cut from some 7 Gypsies paper - time was going to be my main theme until I used this sheet of paper which referenced Suchard (i.e. chocolate) so now either I'll go both or no specific theme at all (which may prove difficult in the next lesson!)
Next time we're looking at design principles - and I think I will find that much harder!