Art Book - 'No One Knows...'

I wanted to try something different and took my inspiration from vintage images I'd downloaded from art-e-zine and decided to make the whole book from scratch.

I covered 2 pieces of thick card with images of book covers (from an ephemera CD I got off ebay) . For the front cover, I ran a strip of paper lace down the side, which was coloured lightly with a fuchsia inkpad. Using Anna Griffin alphabet stamps & gold ink, I stamped the title onto pieces of frayed fabric & finished the cover off with buttons, a gem-enhanced flower and cut-out leaves.

I decided to use the title, 'No One Knows', as the beginning of the caption for each layout, and used mainly K&Co and Anna Griffin papers.

The first page - I didn't know who this lovely lady was until later when I googled her name - Maude Fealy (which was on the bottom of the picture), and discovered she was an actress! Having already decided she looked like she could be an actress & planning the layout around that idea, I was rather pleased to find out I was right. I used a mixture of paper & fabric for the background collage and printed the words. The 'the world is your oyster' & 'Dream' die-cuts are from the K&Co 'Maison' scrappad.

For the second layout, I threaded a length of sheer red ribbon through the paper buckle (from K&Co 'Hannah' scrappad) & layered a couple of buttons to add dimension.

The pink-ish paper on the extreme top left is an image of a page, which was on the Ephemera CD (off ebay). The feather was to add interest to the page; I attached a paper rosebud to the lady's hair & a piece of lace to her sleeve. The row of buttons at the bottom of the page are actually paper.

The papers on the last page with the image are from BasicGrey's 'Scarlet's Letter' range. Red embroidery thread 'frames' the picture, which is accented with a fabric flower held in by a mini black brad.

Of the 4 images, this last one is my favourite -- there's something haunting about this woman, I wonder what she was like, what dreams she had that she may have sacrificed... or did she fulfil all her dreams, much to the 'horror' of her family and society?

I finished the book off by binding the covers & pages together with strips of red velvet and white fibres.