music - my round robin ab theme

one of the altered books that i did for a round robin was "music" and participants could put in their feelings about music, their favorite music, their favorite artists, and more. before sending the book out, i did a few pages to get it started. this helps the other participants to see what your art style is like, to see maybe what you are expecting from them, or to provide ideas on what you might like them to do. you can always send a list of requests, too, such as "no smoking, no perfumes or incense, no nudity, etc". some people put very detailed lists of instructions and other people are more open to see what they get back.

after doing my first round robin, my main request after that was to not smoke and to not use perfume or incense in my book. i can understand how people who are used to that might like it, but you never really know what smell is going to be offensive to other people. there were a couple books that smelled so bad that i had to leave them in the garage to air out before bringing into the house to work on them.

in any round robin book, it's good to put a list of the players for that round robin. that way, in case anyone get confused or the book gets lost, hopefully it can be sent on to the next person or back to the owner. this also helps the book owner to remember who the participants were when the book returns home. usually each book has a sign-in page where participants somehow leave info on where their own artwork is located and this is commonly done w/ some sort of tags and/or tag art.

i used just a plain piece of brown paper for the background and then used gold ink to make a swirling pattern on the page. then i printed out the info i needed and the titles on natural parchment paper (to look like old sheet music pages) and glued to the background. for the players' privacy, i have blotted out their addresses from this project.

another page that i did in this book before sending it out was to resemble the old-fashioned juke boxes that were located at each table in diners. people could peruse the list of available songs and then make their choices. this juke box has pages to flip through, but the middle pages contained the name of the players in the round robin and the theme of their book.

inside the front and back covers, i papered them to match and used the front one as a title page. the background is just a piece of scrapbook paper patterned with music. the title of the book and other info is printed off on gold parchment paper to match the pattern on the background paper.

the last page that i did before sending the book out was a random page of quotes concerning music. it really is amazing the famous quotes and inspirational sayings about music. i used and piece of scrapbook paper for the background that looked like it had been dyed in a random pattern. i printed out the quotes on the natural parchment paper and then tore them so they would have ragged edges.

the most exciting part of being in an altered book round robin is waiting for your own book to return home so you can see what other people have done in your book. it's amazing the amount of very talented artists who participate in these round robins and the fantastic artwork that is shared. it's very inspiring and pushes each artist to keep up to the level of the other people who have been working in the book.

i haven't done a round robin on anything in the last two years, though, because it got to where it was fairly common for someone in a group to disappear -- usually while they were in possession of someone else's book(s) and artwork. it's very disappointing to have your project lost, especially since you are so looking forward to it's safe return back home.

this didn't happen to me, but it did happen to my daughter. the really bad thing, though, was that it was the group leader who disappeared and was never heard from again. she didn't return phone calls, couldn't be found, didn't return mail or email -- the book was just gone. even worse -- she was the last person to work on the book before it was to come home to my daughter, so my daughter was getting really anxious to see all the neat stuff in her book . . . . . only to find out that it was lost. that situation was the final deal for us in doing round robins.

but, i decided to do something similar but even better. i'm going to start a neat journal and pass it around to my immediate family members and have each of them regularly contribute some artwork to it. they don't know this yet, but they will know it soon! i think it will create a really neat keepsake, too!