Recycled Mini-Album–Early Family Life

I have completed the first two pages in the Early Family Life section of the recycled mini-album.

The first photo shows the photos for this section, and the materials for the first page. The stamp set is Darkroom Door Alphabet Medley, and I used the larger set. You can see that I have stamped the letters onto scrap card using sepia archival ink.

The photos and letters in place, and the border started. Each letter has been embellished with black and white pens.

The finished title page of the section, with the black border on the right being extended into the photo, and more embellishment added.

Moving on to the next pages, for the background I chose one of the alcohol ink backgrounds I made the other day – this is the black and white one, using black, white and silver mixative alcohol inks on the reverse side of a shiny A5 flier relating to solar panels – an appropriate background for this project as it is using recycled paper!  After cutting the sheet into two, cut down to size, I stuck them down, using regular matt gel medium. I chose three photos for this page,and stuck them down at different angles, using the gel medium as before. In the picture you can also see the glass bead gel medium which I used for texture on this page. I love this stuff!

Here is the completed page. I added the white squares of the border using a white marker pen, and the shading was done with a wet brush and some very dilute black acrylic paint. It made the white marker pen run, but I didn’t mind this, as I blotted it off, and then went over the black squares with a permanent black marker pen.

I wrote the title words with a permanent black marker and cut them out, and then distressed the edges with Black Soot distress ink. These were stuck down with regular matt gel medium. The other text was written with a combination of the white and black marker pens.

I applied the glass bead gel medium fairly sparingly around the edges of the photos to mute the edges somewhat, and a little on the background, using a palette knife. When it was dry, I added some silver gilding wax with my finger on the parts over the photo edges, leaving the medium on the background unchanged, so that the background showed through. Unfortunately the photo doesn’t pick this up very well, but when dry, the glass bead gel medium dries crystal clear and the glass micro-beads sparkle.

If you look carefully at the photos, the smallest child in the canoe and in the car, and the small child in the foreground in the group photo beside the baby, is Shoshi!! (I haven’t changed much, have I…) The Ford Consul was new when this photo was taken, and I can just remember this car, which was lime green with a bench seat in the front. Before that we had a Riley but I don’t remember that.

I am making reasonable progress with this album but there are still an awful lot of pages to embellish!! With this double page spread I have begun the second of five signatures. I am determined to finish the project by the end of the year because I am anxious to start on some new work, majoring on textiles, and getting my new sewing machine going, and developing my teabag art.