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 double needle coptic binding. Show all posts

Friday, January 27, 2012

Book 349 - "Rite of Passage" - AARP Membership Card Pocket Notebook/Jotter - Double-Needle Coptic Stitch Binding.

I'd thought a few times of making book covers from credit cards, but it didn't seem too smart to put them on the 'Net for all to see. So I chose these AARP membership solicitation cards instead.

I remember clearly the day I got my first piece of junk mail from AARP. I'd just turned 50 and the mail was an invitation to join the organization. I remember my then-husband saying it was a "Rite of Passage," right up there with a young man getting that "Greetings" letter from Selective Service on turning 18.

This little notebook is pretty straightforward. I just poked two holes along one edge of two cards, folded up some signatures and trimmed them to size, and bound the whole thing with a double-needle coptic stitch binding. The hardest part was remembering how to do the binding. Mostly, I do single-needle coptic and I think I made a mistake or two on this. I should have looked it up.

Oh well, I'll never sell this one so it will just end up in some personal "archives" somewhere.