Be it paper bags or coke cans, not much goes to waste in Kate Usher's house.

As an artist of altered books, the Middleboro resident takes unwanted materials and books and turns them into elaborate, unique pieces.

“It started out as a book nobody wanted anymore that was going to be destroyed and thrown away,” explains Usher, whose work is on display this month at the Mattapoisett Library.

The pages of the books are painted and filled with collages of cutouts, drawings and sayings. They may be edged with fringe or several pages glued together with the center cut out to create a shadowbox scene. Sometimes the books have a theme, sometimes each page tells a different story.

Usher has been an altered book artist for at least 15 years. She started after a neck injury prevented her from quilting. Someone introduced her to rubber stamping and from there she learned about altered books.

“Paper replaced fabric,” she said.

Most of the pieces Usher creates are also personal journals.

“Any of my own thoughts and writing is deeply buried within the layers,” she said. “I usually don’t tell that there’s something hidden.”

Usher works on five or six journals at a time and said it can take her a year to finish one as she gathers materials to go on each page.

“My husband doesn’t dare throw something away without asking, ‘Do you need this?’”

For one piece, the artist’s husband was called upon to run over a Coke can repeatedly. She’s also created a book from Trader Joe’s brown paper bags. Junk mail, old greeting cards, magazines, and finds from yard sales and antique shops are also common materials in Ushers’ books, which often have a vintage feel.

With so many possibilities for every page, Usher said, “They’re never really finished.”

But there’s always another book to be made, and because they are so personal, Usher keeps almost all of her creations in a room she has devoted to her craft. The art journals she does sell are ones that she hasn’t written in herself.

Her work has appeared in several magazines and art shows. Mattapoisett Library Director Susan Pizzolato discovered Usher’s work at an exhibit at the Lakeville Library and asked her to come for April, a very literary time on the calendar with National Library Week April 8 to 16 and events for National Poetry Month scheduled.

Usher said she was happy to part with some of her books for the month.

“This is quite an honor.”