RECYCLED PAPER-GLASSINE BAG ALBUM – DIGITAL ELEMENTS AND SPECIMEN SLIDES

An update on the third folio

Looking at the front page, I noticed that the pointing finger at the top of the page wasn’t really standing out, so I added some shading around it, and this has improved things. Also, the tag with the two steampunk ladies kept disappearing below the surface, so I punched a hole in the tab at the top, and added a metal key with a jump ring, which prevents this from happening. It’s also an excuse to add some more dangly elements!!

Today I started work on the three final folios for this recycled album, which I shall initially work on concurrently.

Digital backgrounds

Using journal pages, textures and images from the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership site, I created three backgrounds for the centrefolds.

I have now decided on a theme for each of these final three folios: the first is entomology, then botanicals, and finally trees.

The entomology background for the fourth folio

This is a combination of a journal page, a vintage music sheet, a textured background and some gorgeous scratchy texture overlays for the border and centre fold. I used various blending modes to get the effect that I wanted, and I had to adjust the size of the journal page to suit this project, as I have had to do for all the digital bakgrounds.

The floral background for the fifth folio

Again, several different elements layered together. The image on the left was on a journal page and was a book cover with the word “Scraps” embossed in gold. The text was very fancy with lots of swirls, and totally gorgeous. I didn’t want the word, so I erased anything that looked like a letter and retained the swirls, copying, pasting, rotating and resizing bits of them on separate layers till I got the effect I wanted. Again, I added additional layers and some nice grungey scratchy texture for the centre fold. This is quite a dark backgrond, with no flowers as yet, but I think it will make the flowers I add stand out quite well.

The trees background for the sixth and final folio

I spent a great deal of time on this one. It has a lot of layers and I colourised it to brown as a final step as it was a bit too green. The trees do seem to have disappeared a bit, and I may add some more digitally, or as cut-outs. As with all these backgrounds, I have not yet decided on the final look of the pages.

I thought it would be interesting to end up with a tree theme, and to ponder on everything that trees give us. I wanted to write a short poem that would fit on the page, and in order to cover as many things as possible I had to choose one element for each category.

For useful and practical things that trees provide, I chose houses.

For beautiful and cultural things which are for our sheer enjoyment: violins. I have often thought that the violin is a miracle of craftsmanship and artistry, made from raw materials that you would never think could produce the sublime sounds of a Stradivarius in the hands of a master.

Trees in their natural form are habitats and shelters for many creatures, and since I had found some lovely images of deer which live in forests, I thought I would choose a stag.

I could not leave out the most important thing that a tree has ever been used for in the whole history of mankind: the cross of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who came to earth to die in our place, to pay the price for the sin of the world. It is ironic that He spent the majority of His life, hidden from our eyes before He began His short three-and-a-half-year ministry, working with wood as a carpenter in Nazareth. Being without sin, death (the penalty for sin) could not hold Him, and on the third day He rose from the grave and lives forever, and all who put their faith in His saving death and resurrection are assured of eternal life with Him in heaven, escaping the default penalty for sinful mankind which is eternity in the lake of fire. The Bible tells us that “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

The final use of wood that I have included is the manufacture of paper – how this has revolutionised our world! With the advent of the printing press, information (including the printed Bible in our own languages) has spread throughout the world. Also, many of us love to create with paper, and in this case, taking its most humble form – a paper bag which most people would use once, and throw away. It’s a suitable note on which to finish the album.

In case it’s a bit difficult to see, here are the words of my little poem.

Gifts from the Trees

From houses, violins and more beside,
To shelter for the hunted stag,
From the cross on which our Saviour died,
To the humble paper bag.

More specimen slides

For the fourth (entomology) folio, I made some more specimen slides, this time cutting two with the largest sized die which I haven’t used before, and three more of the medium sized ones. This time I didn’t fussy cut the images as these bugs have very delicate legs and antennae so I just cut the small pieces of paper and rounded the corners and inked them. They were assembled in the same way as before, sandwiched between two layers of plastic sheet from packaging.

To continue the entomology theme, I created an image of a magnifying glass in my desktop publishing software.

I shall print this out three or four times and then fussy cut it. The layers will be stuck together, sandwiching a circle of acetate for the lens. I shall attach it with a cord or chain through the hole in the handle. That’s the theory, anyway!

So – reasonable progress made today! Not much time spent in the studio itself as I did most of the computer work downstairs from the comfort of the recliner, which is where I also assembled the specimen slides, once I’d cut and inked them and selected the images.