Journal ring: Part I

Dear Shayne,

People are starting to receive their books back from the journal ring that I participated in on craftster. That means... I can start to post what I made! YAY! (I've been working on these pages for months -- it's been a bummer not to post.)

This swap ring was inspired by the book Alphabetica -- the underlying theme for all of these journals is letters and numbers. I posted photos of my own journal here waaaay back in February.

I'm not overly pleased with these first ones. I really liked the idea of weaving the dictionary pages together for the background, but once I got that out there, I didn't know where else to go with it. This journal had the phrase "It's not trash -- it's ephemera!" stamped on the front page, so I went with that idea:


The more trash/ephemera I gathered, the more it reminded me of a bird's nest, so I tried to tie that in some with the little nest cut out from the dictionary I was using (you can see it in the photo above -- in the dark red circle).


That tiny envelope has a good story -- I was going to cut that from a dictionary page. When I opened the dictionary, a receipt fell out. Perfect! Envelope fodder! I think it was from 1982, which I especially loved -- sitting in that book for 25 years, just waiting to become a tiny little envelope.

In the end, I felt like this spread was a bit "unfocused." Sometimes collages work for me and sometimes... yeah.

But here's a good story about the making of these pages: as I was cutting strips from the dictionary, I realized that one of the pages had the word "swastika" and had an accompanying illustration. I know the origins of the swastika were noble and good, but it's really come to be associated with something not-so-good. Like, in a strong way. In a sort of, "What the ----?!" way, if you were to see it as part of an otherwise benign collage. So I thought to myself, "Self, you don't want that thing showing... just be sure that the swastika side gets glued down to the page." No problem, right?

Of course you know that I just had to glue that woven page with the swastika sitting there, up and out, facing the world. Great. I ended up hiding it behind the F95 deli tag (taken from butcher that night) with a button glued on top of it for good measure. Whee. Adventures in collage!

I hope that Art and Soul is going well -- can't wait to see what you're making!

love,
kelly