INTERACTIVE WALL ART - ALTERED BOOK

My second altered book is finally finished. I've been working on it for approximately 2 months, but that's because I only picked it up about three times since before last week. I think I was looking at it and pondering about what I wanted to do with it, and this is what it turned out to be. It's interactive wall art. I have many old hard-cover books that I got for free from the library's free bin. It took me two days to finish just the front cover (love that gel medium). I think the pictures kind of captured how shiny it turned out. I put about 4 coats of lacquer on it. I love shiny. On the spine, I put the new title of my book - I call it "Swing", and you'll see why in a minute. As you open the book there is a torn page in between the cover and the next page:


The view as you open the book reveals that is was all glued together in the middle, carved out and used as a shadow box. As you can see from my post of February 17, 2008, I love making shadow box art. Voila - the final product: I found some chain in my metal box and different hooks and links. I glued a piece of driftwood up at the top of the piece and attached the chain on either side of the top driftwood and also to a small piece of driftwood for the swing seat.
Attached to the seat is a picture of my son. I had to bend him a bit to get him to sit right and then I glued his hands to the chains. I added some more wood and some rocks to the bottom to blend in with the scenery. He swings from front to back and side to side, quite freely. I forgot to take a picture of the back, but to hang the picture on the wall, I anchored a piece of hemp across the back with two wood screws. When I hung the book on the wall, I noticed that the front cover swayed open just a bit too far, so I rigged a hook out of a couple of jump rings and the ear piece of a hanging earring. It's just light enough to allow people to open it and keep it from falling off the wall. I'm so proud of this one. It was truly a labor of love. This is my first piece of interactive art hanging in my home, and now that I see it on the wall, the first of many to come.