'Paris is always a good idea'

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'Paris is always a good idea'
A handmade book containing a collection of illustrations & edited photography from a trip to Paris in 2010

This was a self-motivated project combining my love of handmade books & Paris. For my sisters 24th birthday I wanted to make her a special & personal gift, so decided that the subject would be our trip to Paris with our mum a couple of years ago. I had a general idea of how I wanted the book to look, & what kind of look overall I wanted the images inside it to have, but in the end I just kind of made it up as I went along.

I wrapped the finished book in polka dot paper & placed it in an envelope rather than using giftwrap; this way the book can be kept in the envelope after it is opened

Cover - To create the cover of the book I bought an old leather bound book from a charity shop, removed the pages, then cut the front cover of the original book in half so that I could create a 'door' to the work inside. I glued a ribbon around the back of the book so that it could be tied at the front to keep the book closed.

The black & white photo on the left is a portrait of my mum. I used images from a previous project that I did for University that was inspired by the photobooth photos in the film 'Amelie'

Because the book is a personal piece, I wanted to book to have a 'shabby' look so used various types of paper & media

The pages fold out as a concertina strip, I wanted the images to be viewed all at once so that the different colours & textures could 'bounce' off each other. I'm also interested in the bohemian side of France, and wanted to reflect this aspect of the country in the book