Shoshiplatypus

It was my plan some time ago to do another page in my Organic Journal on the theme of the Voynich Manuscript, and as this is the penultimate page in the Journal, I thought I’d better get on with it in case I forgot! For background on this extraordinary book, please see my blog post on the first page I made on this theme.

Choosing the papers

By the time I took this photo, I had already trimmed some of the papers to size.

Backgrounds

For this spread, I chose two quite large pieces, which more or less represented whole pages from the Manuscript. For the right-hand page, using two separate images, I needed a whole-page background to lay down first, to take care of any gaps between the elements. For this I chose one of my “old walls” gel prints – one of the less successful ones as I knew that most of it would be covered up and I wanted a subtle background where it showed through.

For the left-hand page, I chose a whole page printout from the Manuscript, which more or less covered my page.

I filled the gap on the right with a piece of gel print which was a ghost print on Amazon packaging paper from one of my sink mats.

These papers provided the foundation for the pages, ready to add:

Collage elements

On the right-hand page, I laid down the main image, and then tidied up the edge of the image for the right-hand side – this was from a printable that I had already cut into. I trimmed the left-hand image to leave a gap between the two deliberately, so that there would be some contrast between them, and filled this gap with an edge offcut from a gel print which was predominently gold, but which had interesting dark bands at the edges.

Further collage elements in the form of scraps, and a piece of Voynich script, filled the gaps.

I fussy cut around the edges of the strange leaf-like roots of the plant on the right, and overlaid this on the script. I cut several strips of this script printout which I had coffee-dyed to tone it down and age it. The brown spots to the left were on a scrap of tissue paper which was a first pull print using one of my sink mats; the tissue in between became pretty much invisible when stuck down. Other scraps filled the gaps and added texture in this area.

I also added a scrap of the floral gift wrap that I got on AliExpress recently.

I had a job getting this to stick, and think I should probably have used heavy body gel. When the spread was complete, I covered it with a plastic sheet and weighted it with heavy books in the hope that it would stick down properly.

Working on the left-hand page, I added another strip of script at the top.

I also added a fussy cut flower from another of the printables.

Further down the page, I felt it definitely needed an accent of gold to balance the gold strip of the other page, so I tore a circle from one of my gel prints that had these circles on it, but they were pretty much obscured by a layer of gold that covered the whole thing. I held the tissue paper wrong side towards me in front of my lamp, and was able to trace the outline of the circle with a wet brush so that I could tear the circle and its centre out. I didn’t want a hard line.

This element was finished with the addition of a few words of the script that I fussy cut, and stuck down on top of the circle.

Here is the completed spread. I completed the right-hand page with more fussy-cut flowers.

Details

The left-hand page, complete.

The completed right-hnd page.

Left-hand page, top half.

Left-hand page, bottom half.

Right-hand page, top half.

Right-hand page, bottom half.

A closer look at the detail

The bottom of the right-hand page.

A close-up of the fussy cut flower and floral gift wrap on the right-hand page.

A final look at the finished spread once more.

I hope you have enjoyed this return visit to an extraordinary Mediaeval manuscript. Maybe someday the its mystery will be solved. Who knows?

This is the penultimate page in my Organic Journal. I shall have to think carefully about how to embellish the final page, and complete the project.

I am already thinking about what I shall be working on next. Watch this space!