I am very proud today to officially show you my very first project as a member of Our Creative Corner's DT and thus offer you some mid-month motivation and inspiration!
There is still almost a fortnight to go with joining the challenge and I would love to see your awesome creations over there too! This month is "anything goes" time!!!! So I am sure I will see a lot of awesome projects entered... ;)
For my first OCC project as a Design Teamie I chose to do one of my favourite "themes" - a booklet. It turned out rather feminine, which is not what I do mostly, but that is just how this booklet turned out - it developed almost by itself (and maybe I developed alongside with it too ;).
I apologize in advance for a rather word and picture heavy post ;)
"history untold" means the history we - the ordinary people like you and me - "write" just by being in places and living our lives... sometimes at places that have a wider known history on their own...but would they have it without people who have been telling it? I believe it is us, who write history and not the places.
Maybe Dr. Watson would have never become Sherlock Holmes' "room mate" hadn't he heard that violin? How would this have changed the Sherlock Holmes stories?
A galant kiss behind closed doors might have changed some lives of girls, we do not know of... but a great "story" may have started with such an event... and I am sure, this has happened in famous places too... Prague, Rome, Venice... who knows? And where did something like this happen to you? This place has it's very special history now for you, hasn't it?
There lived a lot of highly talented women who painted famous places for their own personal keeping...never showing it to anyone but their dearest friends or family. Think of Sibylla Merian, who was one of the first women who became famous for their painted work... just because we don't know of them, this does not mean that there are a lot of gifted artists/painters out there...even today.
I often wonder how childhood days friendships looked like some fifty, eighty, hundred, two hundred years ago... what was it that children rejoiced in? Are the sounds of their giggles, cushioned by hands held quickly to their mouths, and whispered eternal friendship vows still captured with the bricks of old buildings in famous places? Sometimes I touch these old stones and try to listen with my fingertips...
Which untold stories could a boy have witnessed, waiting for his father to return from the pub, hearing the men's laughter and smelling the warm food?
What about history, written about long lasting female friendship? Shared thoughts well hidden underneath new hats? Afternoon tea filled with gossip, great plans and expectations?
I often wonder how many stories that would be real history (and not only fiction) are out there - yet untold, because they would be the history of people like you and me. And I am sure many of them would be as adventurous and special as history we know today, that has been handed down about famous people...
I used papers from the lovely Prima "Script Pad" as pages, cut them to size and treated the edges using the Sizzix OntheEdge tabs die from Tim Holtz. The backs of the single pages - as they were white - were coloured by using DI "aged mahogany", "pumice stone" and "iced spruce"... applying them to the craft sheet, spritzing with water and dipping the pages through the puddles of ink.
The stamps used for this booklet are from flonzcraft, IndigoBlu, HeroArts and DarkroomDoor. The stains were stamped using Andy Skinner, BoBunny and Tim Holtz texture stamps and heat embossed with dark red "Sternenstaub" embossing powder to add a little bling and contrast.
The images and words were stamped on light beige card (with DI "aged mahogany"), cut out and glued - edges blended with DI "walnut stain" - to the prepared pages.
For the binding I bent two rings of dark wire, which I embellished with a lovely
Artemio button and some coloured lace ribbon.
I left the "history" rather sketchy - to leave enough room for imagination and thoughts on possible untold history - maybe even running with ones own family.
Browsing through old photographs showing my ancestors or reading notes they once made in corners of books or written postcards to their loved ones often makes me wonder how much "history" might be found there - untold yet (and sadly most of the time remaining untold, as noone is left to tell...).
So I created this booklet as a kind of reminder too - to remind me/us to tell our stories/history to our next of kin. Maybe write a diary... or leaving notes in our calendars and keep them... so we can tell our grand children what once was a "moment of importance" to us as it changed our lives...
I leave you with these thoughts and some more close-ups and hope you have enjoyed this rather word- AND picture-heavy post.... I look forward to seeing your creations over at OurCreativeCorner! :)
I am entering SSSaS's "little paper" challenge and FSC's "Anything Goes" challenge with this project.
Hugs,
Claudia - die amelie xx
