Pairing the Pages of the Mamhead Album

I’ve now made quite a few pages for the album and was finding that many of them didn’t have suitable partners to form a double-page spread. I still have quite a few unmounted photos printed out in various sizes and tonight I decided I’d better start creating some pages to pair with the ones I’d already made.

However, before starting that, I completed the purple pages by sticking down some hand-embossed leaves. I wasn’t able to do this yesterday as the heat-embossing had warped the pages so badly that they had to spend the night under a pile of heavy books, which more or less sorted the problem – any further warping should be controlled once the pages are stuck to the pages on their reverse.

Here are the two pages in close-up.

I left these pages to dry. The Pinflair glue does take a long time to dry, but it creates a very good, strong bond, and at the same time it adds dimension as it is a clear gel.

Moving on to another page, I chose two photos of my hubby and his friend walking ahead into the distance. One was already digitally mounted onto a printed background so I just had to work on the left-hand page. I chose a piece of 12 x 12 cardstock from my stash – this card is almost black, with a slight sparkle to it which I thought would look good with the bits of glitter, and also pick out the dark shaded areas in the two photos.

You can see from the picture that using another sheet of inked kitchen paper, this time in pale blues and purples. I chose this particular sheet to tie the sky colours of two photos together. There are some patches of spray glitter on this paper and as it had been use to mop up acrylic paint and gel medium, in places it was a bit stiff, and also the 2 layers would not pull apart.

I didn’t want to cover the whole of the background with this paper as I had done with the purple pages, so I tore strips from it and used them to embellish the black page, some going under, and some going over, the photo. I deliberately tore strips long enough to go onto the other page, to tie the two together as their backgrounds were radically different.

The page pairs showing the inked kitchen paper stuck down with soft gloss gel medium.

While it was still set, I added a bit more glitter, sprinkling it on very sparingly, and then laid a piece of baking parchment over it and ran my brayer over it to make sure the glitter was firmly stuck down. I aligned the two pages exactly, and stuck the excess paper strips onto the right-hand page. Once I was satisfied that it was lined up correctly, I snipped the pages apart with sharp scissors. I propose adding some text between the applied strips – a quote from the Bible celebrating friendship, and if I continue onto the background of the other page, this should tie the pages together still further.

Here is a detail shot of the left-hand page.

Moving on to another page, I chose some more of the slightly sparkly black card to make a page to go with the negative photo with the tree frame that I cut yesterday. I wanted a woodgrain effect on this page, so I chose one of my transparent plastic texture plates designed for cake icing! I always pick up unusual things if I think I can make art with them, and this has encouraged me to keep an open mind whilst out and about, and I often buy things for my art that were designed for another purpose entirely!

In the photo you can see the two pages lying on top of a piece of the untreated black sparkly card. I have embossed the pages with the woodgrain texture plate (which you can jut see in the transparent packaging – it is transparent itself), and have rubbed them lightly with silver gilding wax to highlight the texture.. Quite a nice soft subtle effect, I think.

Here are the pages paired together. I deliberately chose a photo with tall tree trunks to compliment the printed image on the right hand side. The photos were stuck down with soft gloss gel medium and the texture on the background ties the two pages together quite well.

In the above photo you can see that I have darkened the right-hand side of the photo where it fades out (as I mentioned in my previous pot) – I used black soot distress ink and an inkylicious ink duster, and while it’s not perfect, it is an improvement.

Here is a detail of the woodgrain page which shows the texture quite nicely.It gives the impression of looking at a view through a doorway in a creosoted wooden fence!

I have plenty more pages to find partners for, and once this is done, I can think about adding text to some of the pages. It’s starting to shape up now.