365: Make a Book a Day

I'm Donna Meyer and this is a Daily Journal of a Challenge: to make a book a day for a year, to stretch my imagination, creativity, skills and discipline. Inspired by Noah Scalin's Skull-a-Day. Why books? A book can be made of almost anything, and I can stretch its definition. Some will be fancy, skilled and take time. Others will be quick-&-dirty, maybe just images, or ephemeral, disappearing books. Follow along. We'll discover together how to create a book a day for 365 days.

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.

Showing posts with label chinese take out book. Show all posts

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Book 322 - "Chinese Take-Out" - Coptic Bound Book/Jotter From a Recycled Chinese Food Container

Guess what we had for dinner last night? The moo-shu pork was delicious! Luckily, there was some popcorn-type shrimp in one container that were mostly dry. When we finished, I realized that one take-out container was pretty clean. So... a book!

I cut the front and back from the container and glued them to a couple of pieces of heavy card stock to make them nice and stiff. I poked a couple of holes at the top of the front cover and put the wire handle from the container through them.

I folded white paper in half lengthwise, then cut the pages for the signatures to shape. They had to be a bit trapezoidal to fit the shape of the cover.

I stitched the sigs to the covers with a single-needle coptic stitch with red waxed linen thread. Done! Kinda yummy, I think.