Last week we saw this Kolo Cortina Luxury photo album soaked in tea... then dried ... and then warped to perfection. Here's an update from children's book author and illustrator Steve Light on his project:

So now I had the new album looking old and worn and well-loved, and I decided to go with an old-fashioned organ grinder theme.

I made this wood monkey with an organ and crank for the cover window. I drew it on a piece of strong, thin plywood – the kind used to make model airplanes --.and cut it out using a jeweler’s saw, so I could cut the intricate shape and get the details I wanted. Then I stained the wood and colored it with brown and red pencil to make it look old.

The piece of paper behind the monkey in the cover window was blue paper that got a little tea-stained when I soaked the album in tea. I liked the effect.

The original idea was to make the album look like an old scrapbook that an organ grinder might have owned. I imagined that maybe he had some promotional flyers and tickets, like if you gave the monkey a penny, he’d give you a ticket for a show…

…so I made the flyers and tickets with colored paper and waterproof ink. After they dried, I sanded some of the ink away, and crumpled them up and bent them and rubbed the corners. I even threw them in my bag to bang around in there to help “age” them.

When the album was soaking in tea, I had thought the covers might separate, and decided if they did, it would look cool to staple through them. Turned out it wasn’t necessary, but by then I wanted to do it anyway. I had this heavy duty stapler from another project and thought it would be cool to just staple the flyers and tickets to the scrapbook cover. Then I thought it could look like maybe the organ grinder’s scrapbook had been coming apart at some point and he just stapled through the covers to hold it together.

But the staples looked shiney and new and I wanted this thing to look rough and old, so I painted the staples with brown lacquer ink to make them look rusty.

Next, the inside of the scrapbook...

- Ugo