Glue book

I seem to attract collage fodder the way Pigpen attracts dirt.

 Even when I'm not trying, it finds me.

In addition to all the things I clip from books and magazines, rescue from recycle bins, and pick up off the road, I get oodles of wonderful things in the mail from pen-pals and MMSA swappers.

It comes in at a much higher speed than it gets used.

And I won't even talk about the "I'm saving this for something special" mentality, and the "this is too good to use" line of specious reasoning.

BUT, drawing on the endless inspiration I get from reading Green Glass, and seeing all the creative ways Liz turns her ephemera into books, I got serious about diving into my stash this weekend.

I grabbed the most recent bits of stuff from my inbox as well as favorite images stored in a cigar box "for later" and spread them on a folding table, imported to the art room for this very purpose.

Thanks, as always, to Jake for his assistance with this critical mission.

My primary goals were to treat nothing as precious, and to use as much as I could in one weekend.

I started with 2 old file folders, rescued from the recycle bin at work.  I cut them into quarters, and then folded each of the 8 pieces in half.

This gave me 32 surfaces to cover.

Here are the results.

Some I love, some I hate, but all were fun to make:

#1

#2-3

#4

#5 The brown part is a half-page with blue circles glued on top, and holes that show the green page below

#6 & #7: Here's what it looks like when that half-page is turned.

#8

#9 & #10: Painted tag taped into the middle of a two page spread

(Same spread with the tag flipped the other way)

#11

#12

#13

#14: I've been saving that electrical-outlet-with-eyeball image for years

#15

#16:  found poetry

#17: It's possible I never throw any scraps away.  Ever.

#18 & #19

#20

#21

#22: This one kept going from bad to worse, so I went over the top

#23

#24

#25

#26

#27

#28

#29

#30

#31

 

 

#32

It took the better part of three days, but I managed to cover every surface.

 And what did I do with them?

Stitched them together into a book, of course!

At first I thought I'd just make a Diana Trout-style duct tape journal and hold it together with rubber bands, but I upped the ante on myself last night and used the long-stitch binding method (also learned from Diana Trout!) to make this book:

CitraSolv papers grace both the inside and outside covers.

I may or may not add more collage to the cover surfaces.

 

This makes me so incredibly happy. 

 

 I wish I could say this project used up all the scraps on that table, but not even close.

Guess that means I'd better start another one right away!