Let's start with my desk the way it looked at some point last night:
It's the atlas that I'm transforming into an art journal. I had left it lying way too long and am now picking it up again. I'm still in the stage of gessoing the pages. I'm about halfway done with that, so no wonder it's nowhere near ready to serve as my journal yet. When the gessoing is done I think I will add color to the spreads by applying acrylic paints with a credit card. I like the smooth surfaces this gives. But...it's still early in the game and I may change my mind several times before anything is decided. We'll see...
Now here's what's on my desk right now:
I already announced I want to make a third remains of the day journal, but this time in a square format. I'm going to name it ROD Square, haha! It will probably be about 20x20 cm (8x8 inches). Yesterday I picked out some papers from my enormous stash and now I'm cutting it to size so I can start sewing the base of the pages. I love handling all that gorgeous paper. It's all double sided paper which is perfect to make books from.
Now when I pick papers I don't go through some lengthy process of trying to fit papers together or anything like that. I just drag out a couple of paper packs, randomly take out some papers from each pack and then mix them all without really thinking about if they go together. I have found that with these kinds of journals pretty much anything goes together. That's what makes them fun!
Finally a little update on something I mentioned in a previous post about doing a Stolen Ideas Project. The idea is to put a load of book titles on pieces of paper, put those in a box and then like a lottery draw a piece and work on something inspired by that book. That way I will get to try some new techniques or finally work with some prompts that I've wanted to work with for a long time. The idea really is to make use of all the wonderful books I own. Well, here's the box (as it was on my desk last week)!
About fifty book titles are in there and more will follow as I still have some books lying downstairs that I haven't read yet, but that may be very well suited for this box of possibilities. I don't have any illusions that I will ever be able to do everything from every book. The plan is simply to work with them and surprise myself in the process. I'll keep you posted for I will soon do my first draw and get this project going! For now I intend this to be an ongoing project for 2012, but who knows, if I enjoy this way of working it may last longer.
That's all for me today. Hope your Wednesday is artsy and happy!