Treasure Your Memories!

Try it on Tuesday 's actual challenge wants to see projects based on the theme "Memories".(And remember: their DT-call is still on until Nov. 20th!!)

Another challenge, I enter with this project, is Craft Room's "Time Keeping" challenge. 

The old photographs shown on the lovely projects of the DT at TioT and some of the entries too made me browse through my tin box containing old photographs of my ancestors.

I also thought this challenge theme would be a great opportunity to use my new stamp set from TJ Designs "Birds of a Feather - The Autobiography of a Bird", which I stumbled upon quite accidentally and fell in love with immediately. I also think, birds are a wonderful symbol for the time flying.

Having found some old photographs of some of my ancestors hiking a glacier, I thought, these were the perfect images to capture the meaning of precious moments in life. There's so much adventure-feel in that pictures, being mysty and whitened out at the edges! This finally settled the idea of creating a thin album to keep treasured memories in (with which I also enter TioTs challenge of course).

I chose a paper from the Tim Holtz "Lost and Found" paper stash, showing buttons. This one reminds me of hours spent as a child, going through the buttons box of my grandmother. These wonderful worn and old treasures, silvery or leather covered, some made of horn, some of mother of pearl, some being clear, others opaque.... they always made me wonder, whose garments they once had been on and which adventures they could tell about if they could only speak to me.

So this is all about memories. The clockface with the spinning hand, symbolizing the rush of time ... or it's slowly passing by. I often wonder, how different we feel about time, according to the actual situation and state of mind.

I glued the clear buttons onto some happy faces from a copy of another photograph, which showed a big bunch of happy people enjoying their summer vacation, posing on a weathered boardwalk - supposedly this was taken on the "Traunsee", one of our beautiful lakes in the "Salzkammergut".  After cutting them out, I fixed the buttons with some rough cord to the card, which I first stamped with the lovely bird frame and blended the edges with "walnut stain".

I also played around with lace and fabric this time, doing some layering with card and ribbons.

The hardest part was distressing all the edges of the cover, backing and pages and blending them with "walnut stain". I gave the inner pages some hard times, distressing, blending and sprinkeling with water, as I really wanted them to look worn and old.

The inner pages were also decorated by stamping bird images and cages in Versamark "brown" and "antique linen" Distress ink.

The right picture shows a sample of some of the pages' designs.






The back cover shows another picture of that hiking group on their glacier trip, showing some dramatical lighting. I love, how their silhouettes stand out against that foggy background. And they were posing soo proudly, don't you think? This is, why I also enter Our Creative Corner's "Silhouette Challenge" with this project.

Here also some close-ups as usual. Thanks for stopping by and having a look around. Hope, you enjoyed it!

Hugs,
die amelie xx