Detail from a four panel tunnel book collage of a forest. A stream leads from the bottom right of the front panel deep into the interior where a tiger lies hidden behind some bamboo. A bird perches in the trees of the front panel, while tiny turtles peek over the edge of the second panel. Two owls and a butterfly can be seen hidden high in the branches of this panel, as well. In the third panel, the stream passes through a rocky pass. The tiger peers through the bamboo of the final panel, where more turtles and a monochromatic green fantasy ibis can only be seen by twisting and peering up from the bottom.
The entire scene was created as a collage using decoupage techniques on each of four 4¨x 4¨ pieces of white poster board from which I had torn progressively smaller center peep holes. Ruffling through my cache of photos from magazines, I gathered together bits and pieces to create the wandering stream, rocky pass, and tree branches. The birds, butterfly, and turtles were trimmed and altered from photographs in various jewelry and crafting supplies catalogs. Torn bits of several handmade papers came together to create the soil, trees, and forest canopy of the front panel.
The back of each panel was decoupaged with torn bits of solid colored green napkins, each shade chosen to complement the main components the panel front. The accordion pleat side panels grew from a folded page from a vinyl wallpaper sample book.