Friday, May 21, 2010

Spanish Tiles

This is the second of two custom postcard books I've been working on (the first was Love Letters). This one is Spanish themed. Since I was unlikely to wander into Paper Umbrella and find the perfect map of Spain, we decided to go for a a design inspired by the beautiful tiles of the area. The cover has raised designs copied from a tile I really loved. (Oh Google Images, where would I be without you?) This also served a secondary purpose - I put more detail into than I have before so that I could see how much would come through, in preparation for the cover of The Tell-Tale Heart. And was pleasantly surprised by the result! The small lines came out very well. I think it looks great with the brads and buckle too.

The person this for also loves Gaudi's fantastic architecture (so do I!), and he used a lot of tile mosaics in his buildings. So when I stamped/painted the back paper with Spanish designs I did a bunch of different designs rather than a series of identical ones. The colours, of course, are taken from popular ones of the area. I like the contrast of the yellow and blue. I was originally going to make the postcard corners/pockets out of the same paper, but I just couldn't get the stamps to look right, and didn't like the end result of the yellow paper instead. The silk I used to sew down the pockets alternates between the blue, green, and red of the back cover to keep the colour scheme going inside. It looks much MUCH better this way, and I like the contrasting yellow and blue from the top when it's closed. I think it fits better with the idea behind it then if it had all been the stamped paper. It's got plenty going on, but it's not messy and confusing.

No comments:

Post a Comment