the fog pop-up ab page

this altered book page was done in a book with the theme of "cats". this was a techniques round robin, so we had to work with the owner's chosen theme while incorporating the assigned technique for that month. this particular month -- the theme was "pop-up pages".

i chose to use carl sandburg's poem "fog" to be able to incorporate pop-up pages that had buildings and fog on them. i painted the background pages black, to represent night in the city, and glued down a picture of a cat to represent all the stray and homeless and loose cats that run free in an urban environment. i also used a cat-toy mouse for the cat to have to show that cats do help control the environment from the diseases spread by too many rodents. the mouse was positioned and attached by the tail so that it hung outside of the pages when the book was closed.

for the silhouettes of the city and the fog in the background, i used stickers that looked like city skylines and stuck them to white sheets of vellum. i left about 1/4" of vellum below the stickers so that i could make folding tabs to glue to the book. i made 3 different layers of vellum/skylines so i could cut the outlines and edges to be different to add more volume and depth to the pop-up section.

next i had to figure out how to fold my pieces so that they would automatically stand up when the book was opened and automatically lay back down properly as the book was closed. this took more time and effort than i figured that it would, but overall it turned out well. i'm sure there are patterns for these things, but i'm more of a trial and error type person. of course, that means that i make errors and spend time fixing things!

Fog

THE fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.