From Russia, with love

While trying  to recuperate, I  made this spread for my 7 Continents AB.  It is the back of "The Americans," which I posted here.

I realize this is a pretty lousy scan because of the height of the various embellishments, but I assure you, this is far better than anything I could have taken with my camera.

I began by taking two different book pages from the same Geography book (copyrighted 1974) I used in "The Americans," and turned the pictures into tape transfers.  I used the other page of the map of Russia I used in "The Americans" spread for the background.  I glued the entire piece over a page in my PDR (Physician's Desk Reference), the book I'm using to alter my 7 Continents.
 

What drew me to these images was the writing I found on the two pages I turned into tape transfers.  I cut the tops from the two pages I found the images on, and wrote

: from drying pelts in the Arctic Circle to harvesting cotton in the south.  

I used a stencil to write the words.

I admit, I hurried the tape transfers, and they are not as clean as they could be. But the  beauty of the tape transfer is the fact it is seldom perfect.

Both tape transfers show examples of the Slavic language, and quite difficult for most Americans to comprehend.  Not only are we not used to the pronunciations, we are also not used to the Cyrillic alphabet.
 

The top tape transfer was not worked as much, and therefore the word/image shows better.  The bottom tape transfer shows the background map better, but the words/images on the cotton picker transfer are harder to see.

I cut "pelts" from old leather circles a friend gave me years ago and adhered them to the bottom of the top tape transfer.  The top transfer shows bear and fox pelts being hung to dry.

The bottom image shows several cotton pickers in the cotton field.  

The scan really distorted the image and the tape transfer because of the various "cotton" balls I used.  These were all created from a single piece of cotton my friend Sally removed from a medicine/pill container and gave me.  Everything on this page has been recycled, except the tape.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you are feeling better than Bleubeard and I are.