Alice Chess Tag Book

The theme at Altered Alice this month is stripes. Lewis Carroll represented "Through the Looking Glass" as a chess game, and a chess board is made up from sets of perpendicular stripes, so what better subject than Alice Chess for my entry!

"Alice Chess Tag Book"

Lewis Carroll's original chess representation was used for the subject of the front cover, with a gold punched border to turn his chess board into a more realistic one. The background has Tim Holtz stamped images with plenty of gold Perfect Pearls for some shimmer.

"First Moves"

Each double spread represents Lewis Carroll's moves and depicts the characters in the correct squares on his chess board for each part of the story.

"1. Alice meets Red Queen"

I've added numbers to help people who aren't familiar with the chess notation.

"1. Red Queen to King's Rook's 4th"

The red notation is numbered from the opposite end of the chess board!

"Second moves"

Each double page has an Alice move and a non-Alice move.

"2. Alice through Queen's 3rd (by railway) to Queen's 4th (Tweedledum and Tweedledee)"

Ask me nicely and I'll tell you how I made the railway :-)

"2. White Queen to Queen's Bishop's 4th (after shawl)"

The crowns here are stamped and covered in Perfect Pearls. Notice the white queen ends up in the square next to Alice, Tweedledee & Tweedledum.

"Third moves"

The squares have all been coloured by masking and inking with Red Barn distress ink.

"3. Alice meets White Queen (with shawl)"

Most of the images are John Tenniel's original illustrations from the late 19th Century (hence out of copyright), and coloured with promarkers.

"3. White Queen to Queen's Bishop's 5th (becomes sheep)"

I took the liberty of adding my own "Shirley the Sheep" design in here :-). Note the red king sleeping in the square next to where Alice met Tweedlee and Tweedledum. She really is in danger of being taken!

"Fourth moves"

Well, this is as far as I have got so far.

"4. Alice to Queen's 5th (shop, river, shop)"

This is where the white queen turns into a sheep, they end up in a boat, and then go back to the shop. One of the things that has really impressed me looking at John Tenniel's illustrations is that the characters are always depicted on the correct sides for the chess squares! Some day I'll have the time and money to do a big chess board version of this for the wall.

"4. White Queen to King's Bishop's 8th (leaves egg on shelf)"

I hope you noticed all the extra stripes along the way (Alice's stockings, Tweedledee & Tweedledum's shirts, the background in the shop, the railway...). Hopefully, I'll get a chance to add the rest of the moves in a later challenge.

Entered for the following challenges:
Altered Alice - Stripes
Simon Says Stamp...Spots and/or Stripes
The Stamp Man - Use Red