Emerging from shadow

I have called this book "Emerging from shadow" as that tells the story of the past few months and the sense of movement I tried to create as you move through the book.

I kept wondering what story I could tell with dark pages. It took me a while to realise I wanted to move from darkness to light and that that would be my storyline. On our first day together I got stuck into the idea and worked a line of dark grey running stitch across the bottom of each page.  I then selected seven embroidery threads that moved from dark to light colours and wove them into the stitching - gradually lightening up until the last page is threaded with a light gold colour.

And then I got stuck!

Then next light bulb moment was to select some Latin words for darkness and some for light.  I am not fond of using text and language I don't understand or know; but I feel that Latin lies at the heart of our english language and is a close relative and that feels OK.  I had 12 pages to play with and two covers. I chose 10 dark words and 4 light words. That was the right balance for the last wee while.

I was playing around with some letters I had left over from a project in 2003 (I know I'm not alone in hanging onto things just in case...) and was lucky enough to be able to spell the two cover words - Tenebrae (darkness) and Ignis (light).  I chose to gild the back cover word with gold leaf; but leaving little bits of dark still.

That became a theme to play out - to make sure that even in the dark parts there was some light; and even when there was light, there was still some darkness. Life is like that.

I wrote the words in metallic inks - again the early dark words are darker, the first two light words are lighter, and the final light word 'lux' is gold.

I kept trying to work out how to introduce Susan's other papers and just couldn't. I wanted to. I felt I needed to. I felt I should. But in the end I just had to listen to the book. Susan's papers were golden and lighter; but I needed to add more dark. Which was unexpected but nonetheless felt right.  I chose to add black paper to the dark pages, gradually reducing the amount of black as I moved through the book.

I added some embossed marks and some silver and gold leaf, marking each page with a cross and journey lines; two marks which I have used in quite  a few books previously.  They are personal marks about my journey, my life, my home...

Finally I chose to stitch it in a very simple pamphlet stitch; but using two strands of each of the embroidery thread I had woven into the running stitch. Once again I had planned to do something different (black and gold) and at the last minute it told me to do otherwise, so I did and I'm pleased I listened!