I created this project with the idea in mind that, to quote authors Carolyn Mahaney and Nicole Whitacre, “true beauty is to behold and reflect the beauty of God.” The white sheet of paper, representing the mask of perfection many women strive to put on, is being pulled away to reveal the colorful character of God, which is where true beauty lies. The gold on the inside reflects God’s beauty and makes the composition shine as a whole, more beautiful in its own right than a mask of pure white.

This whole project was handmade using a Cricut machine, card stock, a bit of gold paint and gold foil, my friend Anna's camera (this was before I learned photography haha), and Photoshop.

custom typography
cricut paper craft
photo compositing

 
photo of letters in "true beauty" cut out of a stack of colorful paper

this was one of the two images that made up the final composite, made of layers upon layers of stacked colorful paper laid on top of gold foil


photo of crumpled paper sprinkled with paper stars

this was the other of the two images that made up the final composite—crumpled dark blue paper splattered with gold paint and sprinkled with cut-out gold and white stars


photo composite of two images above

I used Photoshop to combine the two photos into one, so it would look like the letters had been cut out of the crumpled blue paper, as well


magazine spread featuring photo composite above

this was the final editorial piece—I imagined this experimental typographic work would live in a girls' magazine article encouraging young women to focus on their true beauty found within


smartphone showing Instagram post of photo composite image

example of an Instagram graphic that could be used to promote the article


sketchbook pages with scribbled text

some initial planning


sketchbook pages with scribbles and sketches

more planning and sketches—the idea evolved a bit from here but you can see where some of the final ideas came from