Family Portrait

For this project I was inspired by one of my many, many collections: vintage tintypes. Not only do I like the look of these early photographs, they always pique my curiosity about the lives of the people shown. 

In keeping with the age of the tintypes, I decided to use vintage book cloth torn off of vintage book covers as one of the ingredients. I love the natural fade to the bluish-green book cover and the textured brown of the leather-like cover.

I wanted to echo the Victorian-feel of the tintype in the piece, so I decided to use dies from Spellbinders to create both a frame and a background. For the background, I nested two dies from the Elegant Labels Four set...

...and cut from the brown book cloth that was pulled off of the cover.

For the tintype frame, I used the third die from the same set and used it to cut the bluish-green book cloth, also pulled off from the book cover. I cut the same shape from a piece of card stock to glue behind the book cloth to make it sturdier.

To create the frame for the tintype, I cut out the central portion of this die cut and added some dimension by rubbing it with some dye ink from an ink pad.

I threaded two small strips of hand painted paper through the slots at either end of the frame and then glued it to the tintype, which was cut to match the shape of the frame.

To stay true to the source of the book cloth, I decided to use a piece of book board, cut to approximately 7" x 5.5", as the substrate for this piece. I covered it with light weight paper and painted the surface an amber shade with acrylic paint. It was distressed a bit with dye ink as well.

With all the ingredients now ready, I assembled the pieces to create "Family Portrait" and feel like I have honored the couple in the tintype and given them new life!

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Supply List

Spellbinders Paper Art Supplies:

GC-001 Spellbinders^TM Grand Calibur® Machine

S6-005 Spellbinders^TM Nestabilities® Elegant Labels Four

Other: tintype, book board, vintage book cloth, paper, card stock, acrylic paint, dye ink, adhesive, dauber applicator, paint brush, scissors, guillotine paper cutter