Altered Arts and Crafts 101

Altered Hymnal, covered w/ hand-dyed paper

In the past few days I’ve had fun working on some “altered art” items, and I realized that I’ve never done a post on altering! I know there are a few of you out there who may not be very familiar with altered crafting, so I thought I’d do a little primer for you. In my own words,

Altered art is talking old stuff that used to have a purpose and turning it into art.

Interestingly, Wikipedia does not have a wiki on altered art…good thing there is Altered-Art.net to fill in the gaps. One of their definitions/explanations of altered art is

….expression to mean the transformation or ‘alteration’ of ordinary, everydayÂ objects into artistic pieces….

That works for me!

Often, altering or transforming an object implies using mixed media- that is, many different media (such as paints, stamps, fabric, paper, etc) and many different techniques (i.e., stamping, sewing, beading, burning, glazing,) to make the art piece.

Translation: there are no rules!

I personally have altered a number of different items. Sometimes it’s an old book that speaks to me, an old tie that has a history, a key to a lock long since gone, or a piece of junk that is calling for a new life. Here are some pictures of what I’ve done to give you some ideas: