Rose + The Alchemist = Blog Candy

Take 2 strips of card (one side decorated with pastel, the other with watercolour & gold powder)
add some quotations from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

fold it into a book, (not just any book but a double concertina/accordion fold)

and there we have a present for the lovely Rose for her Blog Candy! (she has some more pics)

Sounds simple doesn't it? Hmmm?
I've cast around for ideas for what to do for Rose ever since we signed up for Blog Candy, luckily we are allowed a year to send our gifts, so that took the pressure off! I had an idea or two which would have been adequate, but i’d basically decided to wait until i hit on something that felt right. I knew something would come.

You’d never guess from the work she does that Sue- creative spirit- is partially sighted, but one bonus for me is that sometimes she gets books & I get to read them for her! I then give her the low-down & she decides whether it is worth the effort reading herself… well, you try holding an optic lens 2 inches from the page & see how comfortable you are after a couple of pages… & then try scanning down the page to skip the boring bits… or find the end of the last sentence when you move or look away…. very difficult & time consuming!

When Sue asked if I wanted to read ‘The Alchemist’ for her the penny dropped… oh, Rose likes this guy… in fact i’m sure she said this was her favourite of them all…. there’s bound to be something in here i can write out for her…

A bit of an understatement as I now have pages of quotations from it & the next decision was which to actually use. Then i wasted time trying to use colours that i thought she would like rather than letting the words & the piece speak to me… alchemy…. gold…. pretty obvious really.

I decorated 2 strips of paper… pastel on one, watercolour on the other…. decided i liked both & would have the back decorated aswell as the front…. so, now i had a spare in case i messed up… it was going to be something to hang at one point…. then it was going to be an extra long concertina book…. then i had ideas that would have taken 6 months to complete…. then i knew i wanted lettering on both sides…. then i wondered if i could interlock the two strips of paper… and decided i could…

I haven’t made one like this before, tho’ i’m sure there will be pictures & instructions in books or on the internet all over the place if i looked…. but i never….so i folded & made the cuts & panicked cos i thought they were in the wrong place & sighed with relief when it worked…. & talked to myself all the while & told my self off & laughed at myself too…. the idea is to make a mock-up first...

The lettering was done after the folding, in gouache, with ruling pens & broad edged nibs, then finished off with a mulberry paper on the cover & gold thread to fasten…. now, i’m sure i set off with the idea of a nice simple tiny accordion book….

Quotes from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

-Each day in itself brings with it an eternity

-Everything on earth is being continuously transformed because the earth is alive and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognise that it is working for us.

-Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.

-If what one finds is of pure matter it will never spoil and you can always come back. If what you found was only a moment of light like the explosion of a star you would find nothing on your return.

-Listen to your heart it knows all things because it came from the soul of the world and it will one day return there.

-The soul of the world is nourished by peoples happiness... to realise ones destiny is a persons only real obligation.

-And when you want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.

-Never stop dreaming follow the omens

-Intuition... a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life where the histories of all people are connected and we are able to know everything because it is all written there