My good friend and mentor Susanne Martin lend me her marbling vat, supplies, and expertise the day after Christmas and after eight hours at her place I came home with quite a few nice sheets of marbling. I brought along a stack of colorwashed papers that I was mostly disappointed with, and captured the leftovers in each vat to rescue the papers. There were other people marbling also, so I was able to print with some colors that I would not have chosen, and get ideas from their choices.
It led me to finally, finally produce a blank journal this past weekend. What was funny is that I used the rescued papers for this book, my favorite one, and my least favorite one. This is why I find it difficult to get rid of anything – I have found a perfect match for mistakes or disappointments so many times.
The book cover is upcycled from a novel titled “Eden’s Lost.” I left the title on the spine barely visible. I like to retain a bit of the original book somewhere when I upcycle it. The binding is longstitch; the paper is Stonehenge. Dictionary page entries collaged on the cover (inside and out) are for “whatever” and words with “when” and “where.” I call it the “Whatever” book because the pages are suitable for whatever you’d like to do with it, but I also chose that word because I had just read that the word “whatever” had been voted the most annoying word for several years in a row. I can understand why, but sometimes I get annoyed at the contortion of a perfectly fine word’s meaning and wish to restore its reputation. I guess that it is part of my love affair with words.
slowly she turned 