My Digital Altered Book Cover

I am almost finished with my digital altered book! I just have one more internal page and the back cover to finish and then I can submit it to Artella for their book conversion software.

OK, here's how it works. The image you see above is what you get to start with. I happened to pick this book because I liked the title. There are about 30 titles to choose from, so you can usually find something you would like to work with.

When you get the digital kit, you get a front cover (like the one shown above), a back cover to match, and eight pages from inside the book. These are all taken from actual books that the copyright has expired on. All of the images are in jpeg format and you can alter them however you want. All you need is an image editing software package like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

You can find tons of digital ephemera kits online at scrapbook sites. They are very cheap (about $2). You can also create your own ephemera by scanning objects like ribbons, frames, whatever you can imagine as a decoration, on your scanner. Then, save the images in a png format to make them transparent so you can place them into your pages. Any ephemera kits that you buy will usually be in png format for this reason. You can change the color of your ephemera using your Hue/Saturation setting in Photoshop. You can also alter the size of any frames, ribbons, etc. so they will fit your images perfectly.

Here is my "altered" front cover:



I liked the title of the book because of the dolls reference. My idea was to translate this into our kids, a.k.a. our "living" dolls. The pages on the inside of the book are all altered with my own digital papers and all of my own family heirloom photos. The ephemera on the cover was all purchased from http://www.cottagearts.net/, except the little heart at the bottom. That came from Artella shops.

The photo above shows my mother's little brother, David, as a baby. He died shortly after this photo was taken, I believe. She named my brother David after him. As for the photo on the right, I'm not sure if that's him. Maybe my sister can comment on this one.

As you can tell, I'm really excited about this little project. When I get the completed book converted into a digital book I will leave the link posted here on my blog so you can "turn the pages" and read my book! Artella has the rights to these creations, but I can post my link here and you can still view it. I'm under the gun to get this finished, though. I am entering the contest on the Artella website. Hopefully there will be alot of entries and books to thumb through when these are finished. The deadline is Sunday at noon.

If you would like more information about this project, just click on the Artella link on my sidebar. It is explained in much more detail there. I just wanted to post my progress on this. I will let you know when it is finished.