Tale-ing Fragments #11: Expedition log, fifth entry – folded insect guide

Hi everyone,

Can you believe it's been five weeks?? I hope you're enjoying this journey as much as I do :)

I've been playing with another type of book-making this week, a simple accordion booklet. It's super simple to make, and adds so much! You can see the making of the little insect guide (and the rest of the pages) in the video here, or visit it in my YouTube channel:

After last week's turmoil, it looks like our guy, J., was able to get back to work and focus again. Or did he?...

The two pages this week have a pretty simple composition, but a lot of details when you look closely, then you can see tiny details of text stamping and the staining of the background.

The large butterfly on the right page is the first thing to catch the eye in the double-spread because of its strong coloring. I chose yellow-orange coloring to create a connection to the first page of the journal and the butterfly wing piece in the specimen baggy. The butterfly image also balances the diagonal line, created by the ephemera pieces across the two pages. And looking closer at them, we can see that all the labels here are familiar from previous pages and connect to J.'s work.

But the real focal of this double-spread is the little insect guide on the left page. It's very unassuming when closed, but when opened... I just love these images SO much. They're all from Tim Holtz's Entomology stamp set, one of my faves, I use the text stamp from that set all the time, so it was high time to bring the insects into this project!

I love accordion style books, they're so easy to make but give so many options, because they open to this long strip, and it's fun to have two sides to play with. Plus, the folds of this tiny book are a perfect place to hide a little note...

Finding this kind of cheap general guide in the journal of a researcher is a bit curious, he would definitely need a much more thorough book for his work. But maybe this little booklet was a gift, given to our guy by this R. And that begs the question - who is R. and what did he, or she, mean to J.?

Next week we'll say goodby to this journal project, I hope you'll join me for the binding and finishing! If you have any questions please feel free, I'd love to hear from you :)

Have a wonderful weekend (and week), and see you next time,

xx
Naama