Second ABC round robin exchange #2

Greetings Everyone!

It's high time I showed the art work from our second swap.  This time around I received Lisa's book.  Her theme was Into The Trees...a fairytale of sorts.  Wow-talk about an open ended subject!  Again the problem I had was narrowing down the subject into something that would fit into a spread but still be uniquely my own. As luck would have it I had just finished the book you see above: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  I'll admit that I am enamoured with this book and highly recommend it.  It's got to be one of the most creative books I've read in quite some while. Yes it peculiar.   It is listed as a young adult book but much like the later Harry Potter books doesn't read like one. This book is a mixed Media Artists dream.  It  is filled with amazing and very peculiar vintage photos which the story has been cleverly woven around.
Well since Miss Peregrine home is in the woods and is basically a fairytale it seemed tailor made to be my subject for the theme of Into the Trees.

Well this is my first page.  I wanted to present a simple page that looked like it was from an old book. I have tried to set up my theme by using a quote from the book.  The quote reads "I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen"  
                                                                                                       Ransom Riggs

The next page again I tried to keep simple.  The text on this page is a portion of the story in my own words.
The text reads:
All through my childhood my Grandfather would tell me incredible tales about his life in a Welsh children’s home. This was an enchanted place designed to keep very special children safe from monsters. It was located on an island where the sun shines everyday and nobody ever gets sick or ages. I believed every one of his fantastic tales until the expected adult skepticism took hold, to my parent’s relief. This new found skepticism lasted until my grandfather was murdered by something I can only describe as a monster. But I didn’t believe in monsters!  Monsters were just fairy tales like my grandfather’s stories. But when this letter and pictures were found in my grandfather’s possessions my skepticism started to waver and I knew that I needed to find the truth .

To this page I added the letter, a picture of Miss Peregrine and the little Angel. These are both my own vintage photos that I have been collecting forever. 

The page ends with a line of text that sets up the next spread. It reads:  My search for truth led me to the Welsh Island from my grandfather’s stories and into the trees…

Here are both sides of the spread.  Unfortunately the pages were too large to get a picture of the entire spread in one photo.  But in the first shot you can see Miss Peregrines Home in the back ground and some "peculiars" in the foreground.  The next page shows more "peculiars".  These pictures are a mix of my own collected photos and unusual photos that I found on the web. Please note that I have made my own peculiars and not the ones described and pictured in the book.  As for the peculiars there are: scary clown person, Siamese identical twins, Boy with the removable head, Mouse girl and her dog friend, stone face girl on roller skates with balloon baby on a string.  This spread is totally pieced together from different images. The trees, bushes and grass are all 3-D effects created with Golden's light molding paste.  The collage was then painted to pull it together and make it one piece of art.

The texts reads: The trees began to thin and I came upon a clearing filled with green grass and a house. This was it! The house from my grandfather’s stories just as he described it! Miss Peregrine’s home for Peculiar Children.

I end my submission for Lisa's theme with two more peculiars and another quote directly from the book:

"I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was. "
                                     Ransom Riggs

I thought this quote was particularly true about life.  How many times have we all ignored the small details of our lives?  If we just look closer we will find that those small "seemingly" ordinary things are extraordinary.

Over and out until my next post.