This altered book is in the carcass of a book I loved about buyer behaviours called What Women Want.
I removed lots of pages, and it has now 31 double pages, into which i collaged highly coloured Merry Kohn calendar illustrations, and remnants of a series of highly coloured glossy images:
- Merry Kohn’s Seasons Calendar my mum saved
- The Hayes Theatre Company 2026 season catalogue
- Vintage quilt wrapping paper
- plain and coloured collage pieces from my collection
I have been working on these 31 pages for quite a while, I think i started it soon after doing the Merry Carousel which was June 2025. I take the book with me to Cathie’s each week to work on in her studio for our studio time. The advantage is that I don’t have to run around my studio at the last minute hastily grabbing things – i have a back pack with the book and pens I keep in the car.
Here are some of the other things in that backpack:
- sharpies (currently the ALDI ones, because they have a greater range of greens)
- paint markers (currently the Kmart ones, because they came in a pack of 20, with its own “handbag”, but i’ve graduated to a pencil case)
- glue stick
- scissors
- pencil
- black uniball eye
- eraser
- most importantly liquid paper pen- for going white over high-coloured shiny paper (cue me ordering some white paint markers from Amazon to test them out, since the liquid paper pen requires squeezing to get constant flow – not good if you’re outlining 12 tiny windows).
Sessions at Cathie’s are usually 3 hours, and I manage to get through 1 – 2 spreads each session. I also worked on it when I was away in Pearl Beach. So the 31-page spread will represent around 60 hours work. Not that it matters, but it’s interesting.
It’s a nice answer to “what do i take with me when I go away” that I may draw on again – a pre-fabbed collage page or 10, and a clear outcome (in this case a block of houses complimenting the existing Merry Kohn illustrations).
I kept a countdown of pages done on the inside jacket, along with a list of what’s in it.
It’s not quite done yet, but I did some images. Here they are.
