What Bill unwrapped

Well, I have managed to load these in completely the wrong order, but never mind.

this is a work in progress and is a practice run for THE book which I foolishly said I would make for the kids' wedding - never having made a book in my life before. I have pored over Beryl Taylor's brillian book 'Mixed Media explorations', also 'Cover to Cover' by Shereen La Plantz, a book about making beautiful books.

I had some silk fusion (paper) in my stash so used that as the colour scheme for the practice doesn't matter, and made some paper casts - I love those. I have some wonderful Indian printing blocks which I was lucky enough to pick up dirt cheap from a shop which was closing down.

the colours on the signatures are deeper than in reality, but I couldn't make them look any lighter. I want to do a very pale wash over the signatures in the real book so was experimenting with paints. I have sewn the signatures to the end paper and have learnt some things NOT to do next time, but I think I am game enought to try the proper book anyway. I have cut out my boards for the covers and will have to paste the cover to those tomorrow..............more of that later.

It was Bill's birthday yesterday and the bottom photo should have been first - the family gathered some photos of jack and had this frame made up! Hamish was fascinated, but Hannah and Alexander were having their own conversation. I had almost forgotten about Jack's crazy habit of climbing up the spiral staircase - that photo was taken through my kitchen window. He would sit there and occasionally yip till somebody heard him and came to the rescue - going backwards down a spiral staircase is a bit difficult!! We would open the gate at the top of the stairs to let him in upstairs - took him several years to learn not to do it.

A very happy day for us all, having all the grandkids and the parents of four of them for dinner capped it off.