MyMothersPearls

Three of my greatest loves are history, vintage textiles/fashions, and England.  Combine those together and I’m one happy gal.  I admit that I am spending quite a bit of time smiling these days, as I begin to work on the Young Victoria Collaborative Book Project with several friends from Silver Bella.  The project is based on/in tribute to the most wonderful movie, The Young  Victoria, currently out in limited release (go see it if you can!!).  Total eye candy for someone like me.

From the movie "The Young Victoria"

Each of the ladies in the project are creating covers for their own books as well as a page or two, and then will go on to create pages for the other participants books.

Needless to say, I’ve been doing a bit of reading on Victoria, focusing on that period of her life right before and just after she became queen.  Up until starting this project, my image of Queen Victoria has been the rather dowdy older version, later in her reign.  No longer! Portraits of her from her youth into young womanhood reflect a rather lovely face with just a bit of feisty thrown in.  Destiny thrust her into the spotlight, and she met it head-on, ruling in what was then pretty much a man’s world.  The love story between Victoria and Albert is compelling and bitter sweet.  There’s so much material to work with its hard to know where to start.

This weekend I am finishing up the front and back covers for my book as well as at least one page.  I used an actual book on Queen Victoria as a base (purchased off E-Bay) for the front cover, and then worked to alter it a bit.  Unlike some of the other book projects I have seen, I decided to let quite a bit of the actual cover show through, as it was really just too perfect.  I embellished with paints, laces, bits of vintage fabric and ribbons, added a much younger and more flattering portrait, and came up with the sub-title “Destiny’s Child” in reference to how she came to be queen, and how young she actually was when she took the throne.   This is my first project of this nature, but I am really enjoying the challenge!