10 October 2004 ... Creations

I was having trouble focusing on my "Dream" lessons, so I decided to print them up and bind them in a three prong folder (to be read without the multitasking distractions that my computer provides). To find my three-hole punch, I had to move stuff around, and I rediscovered a couple of my recent creations...

This is a blank book I made that I am really quite proud of. It was made in response to Sharpies... I was writing in my current notebook with some of my fine Sharpies, only to discover the paper wasn't thick enough and the back of the page was ruined. (A palimpsest is not what I want for my notebook, heh.)

So, the pages in this book are card stock! This will encourage, not only Sharpie use, but also perhaps some watercolours. I can't wait to use this notebook.

This book is 30 pages of full sized card stock (8.5x11 inches). The cover is a crop of a wall calendar from work, isn't it gorgeous?! Protecting the pic, is a sheet of clear plastic, also from the trash at work... the plastic is probably not archival-quality, so my beautiful green lily pond is going to be eaten away by acid in a few years. But I'm living in the moment, here, okay?

The back cover is a tyvek envelope that I cut down to size. I've never played with tyvek before: When I ran it through my three hole punch, the fibers were only half cut and jammed in the punch. Minor annoyance.

The binding is watercoloured string that I wove into rings. This was more labor intensive than was enjoyable, thus the three rings instead of the five that I had planned. But I do like the results. Other than the fact that I didn't match up my purple watercolour with the purple flowers in the pic.

Under my green book, I found these long strips of alphabets that I had printed out and cut down...

I have been having trouble writing in my notebook, but I've found if I can do something "interesting" it seems to pique my motivation. I've been taping stuff in and writing around it, and the alphabet strips are one of my inventions.

I used PSP and typed up the alphabet in several cool fonts, one letter per line, then resized it so it would fit in my notebook. I printed up several on a single sheet of paper then cut each alphabet strip out, cleanly with my paper trimmer.

I taped one alphabet strip to the left side of a page in my notebook and then decided what kind of alphabet list I wanted to write. The first one I did was a List of My Book Titles. "A" is The Artistic Anatomy of Trees, "B" is Brightness Reef, "C" is A Creative Companion... Well, you get the idea! The only letters I missed were "Q" and "X".