Winter Altered Book

Click on any image to enlarge.

The theme for the January 2025 altered book is “Winter.” The text pages are from “The Garden of Epicurus” by Anatole France, which was published in 1924. The covers, endpapers, thread, glue, and mull were all falling apart, but the paper was in great shape.

I used another old book for the covers, and created a spine from bookboard and bookcloth. I cut the letters on the cover from the old book, and scanned them for the first page of the text block.

The pages are tinted with ink. All of the images are from the Winter Junk Journal Kit Blue Christmas by @wildflower_publishing. Each tag has a quote about winter:

Each solstice is a domain of experience unto itself. At the Summer Solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness. At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow. Gary Zukav

The pine stays green in winter…wisdom in hardship. Norman Douglas

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Albert Camus

And finally Winter, with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow. Roy Bean

Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. Paul Theroux

Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. Pietro Aretino

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. John Burroughs

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. Hal Borland

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? Percy Bysshe Shelley

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show. Andrew Wyeth

I believe in process. I believe in four seasons. I believe that winter’s tough, but spring’s coming. I believe that there’s a growing season. And I think that you realize that in life, you grow. You get better. Steve Southerland

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. John Burroughs

I love the idea of the winter rose that’s sort of sleeping underneath the soil. Underneath all the snow is this plant that was growing and developing and could present itself as this beautiful flower in this time where everything else around it is very barren. Corinne Bailey Rae

I want to age the way that life makes you age, because there’s beauty in autumn and winter and I think people forget that. Helen Baxendale

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest. Philip Gilbert Hamerton

We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives. Gary Zukav

The madness of spring is so enticing. I love it when things are opening up and emerging from the ground. I also love the middle of summer when fruit is bursting forth, but I even love the garden in the winter when everything is resting. Ross Gay

The country is more of a wilderness, more of a wild solitude, in the winter than in the summer. The wild comes out. The urban, the cultivated, is hidden or negatived. John Burroughs

I think of love and marriage in the same way I do plants: We have perennials and annuals. The perennial plant blooms, goes away, and comes back. The annual blooms for just a season, and then winter arrives and takes it out for good. But it’s still enriched the soil for the next flower to bloom. In the same way, no love is wasted. Glennon Doyle Melton