Now it can be shared...
Mar. 7th, 2008 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuThis morning was the ceremony at Tani's school when the first graders receive their first prayer books (siddurim). Back in December/January the parents were given the siddurim so that we could make covers that reflected our child's personality and interests. These had to be worked on in secret so that today's ceremony would be the first time the children got to see their siddurim.
Tani was thrilled with his. *Phew!* We'll be posting pictures and video from the celebration later (probably not until after Shabbat) but here are the pictures that we took before we handed it in. (We didn't want to post until now because Tani sometimes shoulder-surfs while we're using the computer.)
The inspiration was Psalm 148, which also evokes the seven days of Creation. This ties in with Tani's passion for various sciences: astronomy, vulcanology, and biology.
The top of the cover starts off with the first word of the psalm, הללויה "Hallelujah". Winding its way among the heavenly bodies is verse 3:הללוהו, שמש וירח; הללוהו, כל-כוכבי אור "Praise God, sun and moon! Praise God, all stars of light!" And at the bottom of the front is the end of verse 7, תנינים, וכל-תהמות "Large sea creatures and all of the deep seas."
On the spine is Tani's Hebrew name.
The back cover continues with selections from the second half of the psalm. Verse 9, ההרים וכל-גבעות "The mountains and all high places" is above the volcano. Verse 10 curves through the animals: החיה וכל-בהמה; רמש, וצפור כנף "Beasts and all domesticated animals, creepers, and birds taking wing." Finally, at the bottom, is the last word of the psalm, the inclusio: הללויה "Hallelujah".
Heather selected various print fabrics and cut out the elements that we were going to use. She fused them to the larger piece of fabric that forms the cover itself, and stitched them on for durability. I scanned in the fabric work and used it as a placed image in Pageflex Studio (it's useful working on a desktop publishing / page layout program!) and then used our text-on-a-curved-path feature to design the text elements. I then deleted the background image and changed the color definition from a golden yellow to fully-saturated black and printed it out on a transparency. I used a product called "PhotoEZ" to create a silkscreen from the transparency, and used "gold" silkscreen paint to actually get the text on the fabric. We then heat-set the paint.
We were also supposed to make a bookplate. We used text that my grandfather wrote for my mother in December 1942: "May you grow up in a world which abhors wars and persecution. May the Lord bless you and give you health and happiness, success and honesty. May we be able many years from now to be as proud of you as we are today. And may you never forget that you are a Jew."
One other detail was that I pasted in special endpapers. First of all, we were worried that the binding isn't the best quality and we've seen several of the older students' siddurim with covers that are separating. Also, Tani has expressed in the past that he admires the endpapers that I used in binding my self-published siddur and wishes he had something with that same endpaper stock. I had two sheets left, so I used that to reinforce the binding.
This was an awful lot of work, but we're very proud of the result, and more importantly, Tani was absolutely thrilled. He kept hugging and kissing his siddur this morning; he's very proud of it and he clearly feels ownership of it.
Tani was thrilled with his. *Phew!* We'll be posting pictures and video from the celebration later (probably not until after Shabbat) but here are the pictures that we took before we handed it in. (We didn't want to post until now because Tani sometimes shoulder-surfs while we're using the computer.)
The inspiration was Psalm 148, which also evokes the seven days of Creation. This ties in with Tani's passion for various sciences: astronomy, vulcanology, and biology.
The top of the cover starts off with the first word of the psalm, הללויה "Hallelujah". Winding its way among the heavenly bodies is verse 3:הללוהו, שמש וירח; הללוהו, כל-כוכבי אור "Praise God, sun and moon! Praise God, all stars of light!" And at the bottom of the front is the end of verse 7, תנינים, וכל-תהמות "Large sea creatures and all of the deep seas."
On the spine is Tani's Hebrew name.
The back cover continues with selections from the second half of the psalm. Verse 9, ההרים וכל-גבעות "The mountains and all high places" is above the volcano. Verse 10 curves through the animals: החיה וכל-בהמה; רמש, וצפור כנף "Beasts and all domesticated animals, creepers, and birds taking wing." Finally, at the bottom, is the last word of the psalm, the inclusio: הללויה "Hallelujah".
Heather selected various print fabrics and cut out the elements that we were going to use. She fused them to the larger piece of fabric that forms the cover itself, and stitched them on for durability. I scanned in the fabric work and used it as a placed image in Pageflex Studio (it's useful working on a desktop publishing / page layout program!) and then used our text-on-a-curved-path feature to design the text elements. I then deleted the background image and changed the color definition from a golden yellow to fully-saturated black and printed it out on a transparency. I used a product called "PhotoEZ" to create a silkscreen from the transparency, and used "gold" silkscreen paint to actually get the text on the fabric. We then heat-set the paint.
We were also supposed to make a bookplate. We used text that my grandfather wrote for my mother in December 1942: "May you grow up in a world which abhors wars and persecution. May the Lord bless you and give you health and happiness, success and honesty. May we be able many years from now to be as proud of you as we are today. And may you never forget that you are a Jew."
One other detail was that I pasted in special endpapers. First of all, we were worried that the binding isn't the best quality and we've seen several of the older students' siddurim with covers that are separating. Also, Tani has expressed in the past that he admires the endpapers that I used in binding my self-published siddur and wishes he had something with that same endpaper stock. I had two sheets left, so I used that to reinforce the binding.
This was an awful lot of work, but we're very proud of the result, and more importantly, Tani was absolutely thrilled. He kept hugging and kissing his siddur this morning; he's very proud of it and he clearly feels ownership of it.