Tall Ships

August Literary Inspiration: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island

Three page layout

Welcome aboard the Literary Challenge for August! I prepared my pages for the Inspiration Post on the tips and techniques section of the Mosaic Moments website. If you haven't caught all the details over there be sure to do so!!

The challenge included talking about what from the story inspired you, so let me do that here and share our photos. 

Treasure Island was the best of the genre of it's time...maybe of all times...and captured the imagination of young men with it's tales of buried treasure and pirates. Ships were the common mode of transportation and being in a nation surrounded by water it is easy to see how many a young man yearned to discover what lay beyond their home shore for the world beyond. Imagining these tall ships is only out done by seeing the Tall Ships.

For me, the ships were my inspiration. My teen years often found me out on Lake Erie in a canoe or sailboat built by my dad. My fascination with the Tall Ships began with a photo of a ship in which an ancestor sailed the Atlantic.  When the Tall Ships sailed into Cleveland Harbor a few years back, it became our vacation destination to go and see them up close. 

Some of the tool with which I began my project.

PAGE ONE

Other items that I included from the book was my version of the treasure map...and on mine "X" marks the spot of the ships at the harbor. I made the map with the help of a light box. The map was printed out from the internet and was placed under a sheet of vellum paper. I traced using a Micron pen 005 and added a few embellishments like a compass rose. I aged the page with some distress inks and cropped it to fit the space at the top of the page next to a photo of the Cleveland skyline from the dock.

using the light box

I also went with some of the stripes I associate with pirates and a font to fit (Bleeding Cowboys). I did a special cut out of the ship to overlap the map and fit into the space next to the title by keeping it attached to the ship.

I used a die to cut waves, glitter to embellish and layered them using foam mounting tape to space them.

PAGE TWO

There are three things from the ships that I love. The polished brass, the ropes and the wood. Everything is so well maintained and just shines. My journaling in the center is framed in a Circle Frame and anchored with 4 gold brads and circled with rope trim and lashed with bamboo cording to seal ends. 

PAGE THREE

On this last page I included a banner of gold coins to swing above more of the striped papers from the previous pages and a photo of some of the intricate knots the sailors work. 

Finally, the buried treasure was the last bit of inspiration I used from the book. It took it's form as the photos themselves. Taken in 2001, just a matter of weeks before September 11th, it was a time when we could never imagine how our lives would change over the next four years. It was good to get them out of their acid-free storage containers and get them into a layout! Good memories, true  buried treasures!

If you missed the Inspiration post you can find it HERE. Hopefully if you've been inspired you'll share your page with us here on Journella. We love to see what you do!

Thanks so much for the encouraging words and cheers that you've left the Design Team, I love to read all your comments, Thanks so very much for taking the time to stop in and take a look!!

andrea