Decidedly Alice Deconstructed

Golly, gee, after I just thought I knew how to get my pictures loaded so they went from the front of the book to the end, they're all assbackwards.
Oh well!! I've been altering this book for at least 10 years. The two photos next to last in this post were done so long ago I don't really even remember when and I've wanted to finish it up for quite a while but couldn't find the motivation.
The tunnel in those first two page spreads encompasses maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the pages. Not excellent planning but I did manage to squeeze in the rest of the page spreads I wanted. Using the original Tenniel illustrations throughout, I had a bunch of fun coming up with the backgrounds. The quilt on the rabbit hole page is one I made. The Cheshire cat page is mostly stretched out from the original illustration with some stamps and some Zentangles in the background. The woods for the Tea Party are my woods with a few stamped trees to blend with the party. That's one of my favorite techniques: use actual photos plus stamps. I did a basic pop-up on that page to keep the table out of the fold and then used a bit more complicated pop-up for the Pack of Cards page.

All in all, I'm super pleased with the outcome and thrilled to have finished my first altered book

Boxes

My latest work, as in hard work rather than fun work, has been helping to build, install, level and fill these raised garden beds with dirt. Nothing has actually been planted yet although we're getting close. The plan is to have 36 of these beds ready and planted by early June. It seems almost an impossible task but I am determined to get as much done as possible and let the rest go with a minimum of kicking and screaming. These first four beds are now filled with soil and three of them have chicken wire put up for peas, which will be planted as soon as it is dry enough to get into the garden. The eight assembled boxes from the garage are now in the garden but haven't been leveled or filled yet. So that's 12 of the 36. The lumber with the cats will make 12 more.

The last shot is of four cigar boxes I've ripped apart to try something new. It was fun and messy getting all of the paper off of them.