Resource Round-Up!

I love book sales. I love picking up gently loved books at bargain basement prices. In fact, I think I love it a little too much as I have an entire bookshelf of book sale finds that I haven't read yet. (Shh...don't tell Hubby.)

Yesterday, my mother-in-law and I took some of our used books down to the public library as a donation to their ongoing book sale. And I did something that I've never done before. I looked for books that I would use for the sole purpose of art projects! It was so much fun to scour the selections for artistic and creative purposes!

I will admit that 1) there weren't many that I could see using since much of the sale was paperback romances and 2) I passed up a couple because I knew that they would just sit somewhere collecting dust and my husband's ire because it would be a while before I'd start using them.

But I did pick up three hardcover books for about $3 that I intend to use in various ways!

The bottom book is called Folk Art of Rural Pennsylvania and is full of sketches and images like the one below. I think I can incorporate some into collage work.

In that stack is also an encyclopedic dictionary. I have seen some delightful images printed on dictionary pages, and I want to try to make my own! I think they'd look great framed and hanging around my house! I can also use some of the pages for mixed media projects. The other book in the stack is called English Drawings. It is full of sketches done by various English artists. It includes this wonderful map of London in the front cover.

I'm hoping I can salvage and use these pages in some sort of project. I'm also excited to use some of the sketches inside. I think these portraits would look great in matching little frames!

I also snagged one of the books my mother-in-law was going to donate. It's an old copy of The Thorn Birds and I fell in love with the image of a bare tree imprinted into the cover. The spine is in good shape, so I want to save this for an altered book and keep that imprint as part of the cover art.

As I was going through my bookshelves and pulling out books to donate, a collection of gothic tales condensed by Reader's Digest ended up on the stack. I've had the book on my shelf for years and have never pulled it off to read it. As I was going through my boxes one last time to make sure I didn't have donor's remorse over any of the books, I pulled this book out. What was I thinking?! Look at the book cover! I can totally use this for something!

And then, flipping through, I remembered that Reader's Digest provides illustrations in all its condensed books! Look at what I nearly threw away (especially the last image which screams Alice to me!!)!!

What cool resources I have to work with! And they only cost me $3!! I can't wait to allow my imagination to take flight and to see what artistic creations I can make!

But first, I have some goals to meet this week...including one with that gothic book cover!

Cheers! Have a creative day!!

(P.S. Thank heavens for autosave as something just freaked out and this post disappeared! Phew!!)