At long last I have finished the first of my journey home books. The second one has all the photos in but is waiting for embellishments and a cover.
Here are some pages from the first book.
The front and back covers were made from a box cut up and covered with some material I brought home from Tanzania. It is stitched on around the edge onto the card and the spine is just material as I found that it needed to bend as the book was opened.
The book started with some very simple pages to record our farewells from the village and school.
I had made the book form envelopes which meant that each page had a pocket in which I could place journalling or extra photos. By the time I got to our farewell from the health centre I had started to get a bit more adventurous and instead of just inserting tags into the pockets I made this tag from an envelope which I could then use to house a tag with extra photo and journalling.
I wanted to embellish some pages but because I had used highly patterned papers I felt that would be too much, so this simple paper ring with beads stitched around the edge was ideal to highlight my text.
As this was essentially a book to say goodbye to my old life I made a point of writing each good bye I had to make down.
This page needed very little embellishment after I had put the text on. What statrted out as a simple button eneded up as the perfect finishing touch once I had inked it and then layered it with clear ultra thick embossing powder and mica spray.
I finished it with a peel off and then more clear ultra thick. The final heating was a bit dodgy as the peel off threatened to melt as well as the powder.I had saved all the paper work and tickets throughout the journey and these boarding tickets worked really well with an aeroplane cut from a child's wallpaper border for this page. Tags from our luggage can be seen peeking out of the pocket.
I had attatched these tickets (below) but wanted to stop them flopping over the page. Peter had thrown some old floppy discs away and had given me the metal sliders from them. I painted inked and stamped one and finished it off with ultra thick embossing powder and a circle from the backing paper. The tickets slotted into it really well.
In my stash I've got loads of shapes which I have made from air drying clay. I painted a simple disc and then wrote in it using permanent marker, to finish this page off.
The embellishment on the tag had been made form stamping into the clay. I painted it in coordinating colours and attached it using lots of glue dots.
This page had many different forms. First off all I stamped the title and got a letter the wrong way round. I managed to make this into a feature by duplicating the mistake. I then managed to stamp unevenly and while trying to correct it I smudged ink everywhere. This was corrected by placing a new strip over the text and extra sticker embellishments around the photo. The final letters were child's foam letters painted with enamel paint. This tool several coats and I have had to attach them firmly so that they cannot bend and so crack the paint.
At the recent Wycombe Scrappers Crop we were asked to create layouts containing a photo of ourselves. These photos were taken by my Mum as I was waking up one morning while staying with her.
The back ground to this one started of with smearing silver acrylic paint over the page with my finger to try and create a dreamy background, I then stamped over it with flowers. The bottom layer is a paper mania paper I have had for ages and covering the bottom of the paper to resemble the bedclothes was the perfect use for it. I finished off with loads of butterflies cut from another paper mania page and gems glued along one of the curves. I stamped a journalling block onto a sheet of plain card on which I had previously stamped with a distressing stamp. I painted a line of silver paint along the bottom and used rub ons for my title.
This layout was very simple, with a layer of torn inked paper, the saved edge of an old cotton petticoat, and two lace edgings one which I had gathered and sewn little pearls into it.
I had these lovely cup cake pictures which needed something adding so I used buttons as the cherries and gems to decorate the slice of cake.
I have taken a break from my journey home over Christmas and an creating a book for my new born niece containing all my hopes and dreams for her.
