The Big Reveal–Mystery Project Complete at Last–Floral Mini-Album about my Mum

Those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for the uncovering of my mystery project that I’ve been keeping hidden since January will be glad to hear that it has now gone to its new home, and I can show it to you at last. It’s a mini-album celebrating the long life of my mum, who died on 9th December 2017 aged 96.

This post will contain a selection of the final photos of the project, and the video of the flip-through that I made on Tuesday evening. Following on later will be a succession of posts describing the making of it from beginning to end, which will take some time even if I upload them on a daily basis, particularly as I am due to go into hospital next Wednesday so there will be a break during that time.

I have made two almost identical copies of this album, one as a gift for Mum’s best friend, and the other for us to keep. The only thing I have changed is the addition of her name in place of “Mum” in the one for our friend. This project has taken two months to complete.

If you have seen the various sneak peeks I’ve been tempting you with since I started, you might like to see if you can recognise any of them! The Flora containers with all the little bits of paper in them were the many photos and pieces of text, printed out and cut up and sorted into separate containers for each page.

I created a variety of backgrounds, some from scratch, and the others with varying degrees of alteration on papers from a stack I’d had in my stash for many years, which I didn’t actually like, and I decided it was time to use it! Until now I hadn’t had the knowledge of how to improve it so it was useable. Only a few of the papers were suitable to be used unaltered, and I struggled with those that I did alter, because the surface of the paper was slightly waxy and at first it resisted the inks until sufficient layers had been built up.

I obviously didn’t use all of the huge quantity of flowers that I made, but I needed to have enough of the different colours and shapes so I’d have plenty to choose from as I embellished each page. The remaining flowers will go in my stash to be used on other projects – a nice variety of colours to choose from!

Processes involved in the creation of this project were various inking techniques, die-cutting, cutting with my Cougar cutting machine, desk-top publishing on the computer, matting and layering, stamping, hand-embossing, drawing, making pop-ups and mechanicals, flower making, masking, punching, fussy-cutting and stencilling. Materials used included printed papers, plain cardstock, gold mirror board, mounting board, various glues (mostly double-sided tape, ATG, Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive and hot glue), Distress Inks, Distress Oxides, Distress Stains, marker pens, UTEE, Stickles, liquid pearls, brads, magnets, threads and yarns, Infusions, Perfect Pearls. Equipment included my Cougar cutting machine, Cuttlebug, Envelope Punch Board, miscellaneous punches and stamps, stencils and masks, pens, coloured pencils, paper trimmer, Stanley knife, cutting mat, various scissors, heat guns, hot glue gun… There is probably more but that’s all I can remember for now!

I used Kathy Orta’s “Hidden Hinge” binding system for this album.

Anyway – enough chat! Here it is.

Floral Mini-Album

A mini-album about my mum’s life

This is an interactive album which on the surface appears to be a series of colourful pages embellished with flowers, but as you explore the various flaps, tags, pull-outs etc., its story is revealed.

This is the front cover.

Inside the front cover is an automatic waterfall mini with pictures of Mum’s early life. The pages turn as you pull the tab at the bottom.

 

 

There is an opening at the outer edge of each page, with a pull-out full-sized tag, with photos and text, beginning with a family tree.

The second page concentrates on Mum’s service in the Women’s Land Army during WWII, and page 3 is about her marriage and early family life.

Pages 4 and 5 deal with Mum’s musical life.

Under the flap at the bottom of page 5 is a piano keyboard pop-up.

Page 6 is the most interactive of the album and deals with many of Mum’s interests and favourite things.

Page 7 is about her passion for ornithology.

It will be easiest to see how all the interactive bits work by watching the video.

The large pull-out tags for pages 7 and 8 contain all the miscellaneous photos there was no room for in the rest of the album.

Page 8 and the inside of the back cover.

Page 8 contains the second pop-up in the album.

Inside the back cover is a holder for a CD of Mum’s favourite music, which was also played at her funeral.

Finally, the back cover and the spine.

And now for the video.

I am sorry to have kept everyone in suspense for so long with this project but you can see how much work was involved, and I couldn’t reveal it until it had been given.

Subsequent posts will deal with its construction from start to finish, and there will be more information in those posts. As you can imagine, I have drafted a lot of posts about this over the two-month period. I am very happy to have completed the whole project before I go into hospital next week, and have a clear desk to return to once I am feeling up to it.

I’ve lived and breathed this project for two months and it feels very strange to have completed it at last. I no longer have any excuse for neglecting all the other things I should have been doing!

Copper and Sepia Thank You Card

This evening I made a thank you card for a friend. She had seen my Mamhead album and admired one of the sepia tracing pages, so I made her a card based on the same photo and the same technique.

The photo doesn’t really do it justice unfortunately.

Here is the original photo.

I printed out the photo to the size I wanted for the card, and laid some parchment paper over the top and taped it down. I traced some of the outlines using a sepia pen.

I used copper Perfect Pearls from my Perfect Pearls palette to pick out some leaves and stems, with a fine watercolour brush.

I cut the two pieces of paper out with a craft knife, allowing a small amount extra of the parchment down the left side, which I folded under, and stuck to the back of the photo, so that the parchment tracing could be peeled back to reveal the photo, as I had done for the album – the album page was done in gold rather than copper.

This is a lovely technique because both layers enhance each other, and it makes the page (or card) interactive.

To finish the card I matted and layered the picture onto some copper metallic paper and some mottled brown paper from my stash, and mounted the whole thing onto a tent-folded piece of A5 pale yellow card.

I thought it needed something extra, so I found some silvery-grey “Thank You” sentiments in my stash box which I’d cut with my Cougar electronic cutting machine some time back – they tone really well with the parchment paper – and stuck them down using Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive, and outlined them with the sepia pen. Using a home-made ink blending tool, I also sponged on some Tea Dye distress ink around the edges because the card base was showing a bit, and this definitely improves the appearance.

I added a tiny spot of two-way glue pen onto the top right corner of the photo – if you apply this glue and allow it to dry, it becomes like the glue on post-it notes. I did this to keep the tracing in place and to stop it flopping forwards. It can be peeled back to reveal the photo, and then repositioned. It did occur to me later that it might have been more sensible to attach the parchment piece at the top rather than at the side but I’ve been feeling pretty exhausted and brainfogged lately so put it down to that!

Earlier today I continued to work on my Infusions album, sticking the samples onto the flattened toilet rolls – I didn’t bother to photograph this because it really wasn’t very interesting – just a rather tedious, messy job! You can see when I started this the other day. This is my least favourite part of making an album. I seem to be making an awful lot of pages and I think there are too many for a single album and I am thinking about binding two or three separate ones into one large cover, which could be quite intriguing.

The latest pages are now under a stack of heavy books to flatten them.

More Purple Goodies, and a Bad Day

Edited – some photos replaced!

As I wrote on my Cancer Diary page, I have had a bad day today, possibly because I’ve done too much this week. I had a headache all day and felt queasy. I spent a couple of hours in the studio this a.m. and managed to make a bar of lavender soap for our neighbour, and find some bath melts I’d made before (also lavender) and made some labels for them.

I recently got these Tim Holtz Sizzix “Labels” set of dies:

and I cut two from some of the paper that I’d sprayed with Dylusions inks and backed onto card.

I inked both front and back with a combination of Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire distress inks, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster for the former two, and my home made blending tool for the Chipped Sapphire as before. It was at this point that my camera started playing up, and the rest of the photos were seriously out of focus! It does this every now and then, and because I was feeling distinctly below par, I didn’t notice until it was too late. (Ed.: Photos from here to end now replaced.)

I hand-wrote the front of the labels using a dark blue Marvy le Plume pen, and stamped the reverse with one of my Stampin’ Up “Butterfly Potpourri” butterfly stamps, using Chipped Sapphire distress ink.

I’m afraid I forgot to photograph the lavender soap that I made, while it was still in the mould. I coloured it with a single drop each of red and blue colouring, hoping to make a pale purple, but because there was only sufficient clear soap for a single bar, it came out quite a bit darker than I’d hoped. I thought I had some purple colouring but I did not. I also sprinkled on some lavender flowers before the soap set.

I found some lavender bath melts that I’d made in the soap making class last year, and also wrapped those up. I used clear cellophane and some silvery-lilac coloured gift ribbon, and tied the labels on with some fancy purple yarn.

Here is the growing collection of gifts.

Not sure what else I am going to do, apart from the lavender sachet to go in the box, and some stalks of fresh lavender flowers to go in, and of course, the little basket to put everything in.

I am hoping to feel considerably better tomorrow. Apart from this brief time in the studio, I have slept most of today, and cannot seem to shift the headache, and I have eaten very little.