Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Ornament Thursday: MOTHERHOOD

I love looking at families and picking out familiar features through the generations. My mother and my sister look like twins from different time periods. I have all these wonderful photos of my mother's side of the fam & I love to get creative with them. I've wanted to do a book featuring family photos with stories, poems, and recipes for a while. And since this month's OT theme was motherhood, I got the inspiration to trace through 5 generations from my great grandmother to my niece.

This was my first attempt at doing an altered book. [Note to altered book artists out there: I welcome your advice & feedback--like what kinda glue do YOU use????] Back to the project: I chose an old Spanish textbook, which is appropriate since my great-grandmother's grandmother was Spanish. I printed out photos in black and white onto matte photo paper and then coloured them with coloured pencils. I used acrylic paints, metalic markers, and sparkley dimensional paint. I used regular glue and glued 5 pages together for each section for the first half of the book. Then I cut out a frame (you'll see) in the last half of the book.

Cover of book.

Mum's mum. Sparkley paint is not translating well in photo!


Niece & grandmother together.


After doing this water theme of Mum, I think I'll turn her into a mermaid!

Favourite photo of Mum & niece on left. Sister Mag & niece on right.

OK, let me splain. The end of the book is a family joke. When we were very young, we used to love to sift through Mum's jewelry box. My youngest sister Mag was about 5 at the time, and she would hold up some trinket and say v. innocently, "Mum, when you die, can I have this?" So that's the punchline at the end of the book.

For links to see the rest of the OT gang, click here.

6 comments:

Lisa said...

What a great project...and I had to laugh at the punchline...my darling daughter, Emma, used that on me when she was 4 about jewelry as well...only she pointed up to the sky.

Katie Hacker said...

Kids just call 'em like they see 'em, don't they? Cracks me up!

Your altered book is such a great tribute. The kind of glue I use depends on what I'm sticking to the pages. I use an acid free glue stick for photos.

Beware - you start looking at books in a whole different way!

Kriss said...

Great project! You're book looks wonderful and it's so meaningful. Very nice!

Hali Chambers said...

Lisa, that's so cute!

Katie, thanks for the tip. And YES! I am looking at books completely differently!!! :-) H.

Michelle McGee said...

Lisa... this is super awesome great!!! I love, love, love it and I love altered books!

Hali Chambers said...

Michelle Thanks! I LOVEd your project--I have a lot to learn!
:-) Hali-not-Lisa ;-)