Omri's Album

Yawn! A 6.05am Red Alert wake up call wasn't quite what I was hoping for this summer, but that's what we got today. So, I'm up. I'm crafting and, of course, I'm still blogging.

Here is one of my latest creations...

I made a Bar Mitzvah album for Omri's brother back in August 2012. Roll on almost two years and it was Omri's turn to celebrate and he too wanted an album. His Mum told me that her middle son is a big reader and that he enjoys cycling, gymnastics, running and... his cell phone! She also mentioned that he is a keen member of the Scouts, or Tzofim as they are known in Hebrew. Omri wanted to be shown doing some sort of flick flack or gymnastics move on the cover of his album, and Mum agreed. She said that he is always upside down!

So, I have shown the Bar Mitzvah boy doing a backflip on the cover on his album. He is wearing shorts and a sports shirt and has the number 13 pinned to his chest, like the numbers he wears when he is participating in a race. The number 13 represents the age that Jewish boys become Bar Mitzvah. 

Omri's other interests are also represented on the cover. To his left you can see a pair of tefillin, the black leather boxes with leather straps that Orthodox Jewish men wear on their head and their arm during weekday morning prayer, and below that, a small pile of books to show his love of reading. On the right is the badge of the Tsofim Datiyim (the religious Scouts) and below that, his new Nexus 5 cell phone. Apparently he's quite attached to it.

Omri wanted the album to have "bright blue and deep blue" on it. Therefore I used two different shades of blue on the cover and inside, and illustrated some of the pages to cover his various interests.​ The first page, which as a Hebrew book opened on the rightmost page (the opposite of an English book), shows a collection of books and his beloved phone. Next I showed him doing a cartwheel (okay, it's not a backflip but it's close!), followed by a page devoted to camping and knots, activities he does with the Scouts. Running and cycling followed. Once again his shirt is adorned with a number 13 race number. His Mum said that Omri's bike is red and black, and his helmet only black, so I tried to match the colours accurately. You can see how teeny tiny it really is!

This album was a lot of fun to work on. It was definitely the first time that I have featured a Bar or Bat Mitzvah girl upside down! I wonder if I will ever get asked to do so again.