Family Secret Album

I'm a bit late in posting this, but the TJBookarts Weekly Challenge a couple of weeks ago was on the theme of "album." I thought about what people do and don't put in family albums, and just for fun, created an album for the information that doesn't make it into the "official" family album. It's very small (about 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"), just the right size to hide in a safe place. :)

Here are pictures of the outside and of the pages of the album. I used blood-red silk book cloth, and bound the covers together using a branch of a rose bush (complete with thorns). The album pages are made from handmade Canal paper. This paper was made from pieces of jeans and other clothing--it has actual hunks of orange and blue and red cloth embedded in it. I hand-tore the pages, so bits of the cloth stick out, sort of an allusion to the family "dirty laundry" that might be recorded there. The end papers are made from red and blue striped Japanese stenciled paper. The album is just the right size to hold shocking genealogical charts, diagrams, and very small confessional letters!