In the beginning (scenes 1 and 2)

So you may be wondering - why so long between posts...welll actually there was a gap but not quite as long a gap as it looks. According to the tags in the photos I took, my earliest full sketch of the whole thing was in August 2017 and I was probably thinking about it even earlier than that, so from April 2016 to July/August 2017 is not such a huge gap really. That it took me from then until now to finish...well that's another story.

I did also do a mini project in August - a thank you to my Japanese hosts but because it's based on their name I don't want to post it up here.

One of the early design and layout ideas I had from the very start was that the first two pictures would be two elements of the story of Jesus' conception and parents relating to angels. Both Mary and Joseph are visited by angels. The nativity story is only told in the gospels of Luke and Matthew, and each of them only relay one of these stories. Luke has the annunciation when Mary is informed of her pregnancy (Luke 1: 26-38). Matthew has the dream of Joseph when Joseph is told not to put Mary aside for being pregnant (Matthew 1:18-24).
I wanted these two images to book end the top row of the design. This is one of the elements that never changed from start to finish of the layout and design.

I wanted the figures of Mary and Joseph to face each other and the designs to be mirrors of each other. The only real difference is that Mary's eyes are closed in prayer, and Joseph's are open and looking at Mary. The clothing colours are deliberately both shades of blue, and are repeated throughout the whole project for those characters

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As a result when it came to the angel's wings. I made a pattern that I used for all 4 of them. I actually cut the pattern out 4 times but I only really needed one!

I also was in such a hurry to start that I think for one of the two I forgot a really easy basic construction detail of most of my picture designs - a base layer of interfacing. I slightly regretted this as the background material velvet was a bit stretchy!

Another thing I decided to learn from previous projects was - don't leave all the boring stuff till the end. Almost every scene has a "door" made in a leaf shape. I did them as I went along rather than being bored at the end. 

When fashioning these first leaves I very quickly decided it was OK if some of the design was visible around the edges of the leaf - a sort of way to guess and remember what came next. After all, it would only be a surprise once. I was very lucky, I had this great green fabric for the leaves from a friend and the amount was just enough for all the leaves I wanted in that colour and fabric. Well, nearly, but I'll come to that later.

Numbers were added much, much later so I could be sure of the entire sequence, although as previously mentioned, Mary and Joseph never moved from positions 1 and 2.