A Book a Day? What's Up With That?


Hi, and welcome to this year-long project. So what's this all about and how did it happen, you might ask. In mid 2007, artist Noah Scalin decided to make a skull out of anything he could find, every day for a year. It stretched him in ways he never imagined, as an artist, a writer and a person. His experience turned into a blog that went viral, and then a book.

Others have picked up on the idea: 365 Hearts, 365 Masks, 365 Bears drawn on a cellphone, 365 paper napkin mustaches.
I wanted to play, too, and I chose books. I love books, I know a bit about making books (thanks to my talented book-maker sister, Marilyn Worrix), and they're broad enough in definition to give me a lot of creative leeway.

The whole point is not really the books. The idea is to stretch myself in many ways as an artist and a person, to set up a discipline, stick with it and see what that teaches me.

I hope you'll join with me and follow along on the journey chronicled here, and let me know what you think.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Book 104 - Schoolgirl Journal - Red checked Plastic

After another day spent mostly in bed, I'm feeling slightly less drippy. I'm determined that tomorrow I will be all better. Good thing, because I got on the phone today to reconnect with old friends and my dance card is rapidly filling up for the next week or two with breakfasts, lunches, literary readings, drives in the country and art workshops.

Pawing through the mess of materials and supplies on my one table tonight, I picked out this red-checked plastic tie-clasp envelope, like an old-fashioned inter-office envelope. When I saw this envelope in the store the other day, I knew I'd use it for something. Today it beckoned. Or maybe I decided to do this one today because I could see it in the pile and find everything I needed without a major archeological excavation.

I only have the one table in my room, and it serves also as a computer table. I mostly sit on the floor or the bed when I'm stitching. But I do need to get that one table more organized!

This was a regular page-size envelope, which I cut down to the size I wanted. Where the red-checked back wrapped around the front, I needed to attach it to the front panel. I first tried gluing it down with super glue. Wasn't happening. Guess it doesn't like the plastic. So then, after cleaning off the glue residue, I used double-sided tape to put it together. That seemed to work. There are 4 signatures of 9 pages each of pastel bond paper in pink, pale yellow, aqua and white. I stitched them to the plastic cover with  white waxed linen thread using my usual longstitch binding.

Cute little book. I can see a schoolgirl carrying this one around proudly.






3 comments:

  1. I like it! Yesterday as I was organizing some stuff I found the reverse piano hinge model that I made based on Diehn's book. Would you like me to send it to you? If so contact me at elaine dot normandy at gmail dot com.

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  2. when I grow up, I want to be like you! I love your designs and creativity.
    From Mexico,
    Teresa Novales

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  3. If you need to catch up with a quick book. Try the 9 fold single piece of paper book. The accordion fold book.

    A book with a rubber band into holes punched in paper and slip a pencil into rubber band loops to hold a pages together. A favorite of mine for first day in class.

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