sky and earth: two softcover books

The part of this project I had the hardest time with was selecting the two contrasting narrative concepts. So, I did what I always do when I'm at a loss for ideas or words...

I laid out a pile of Magnetic Poetry.

And a word that stuck out was sky. I decided to go with the idea of sky and earth.

With that decision made, I needed to figure out what kind of books I would make and with what sorts of paper.

Here is my mess of a makeshift bookmaking desk.

My dog Magnolia also wanted to help out.

Book # 1, the book of sky is a magic book. Since Magnetic Poetry was its inspiration, I decided to write tiny little poems out of words and glue them (with a hot glue gun - ouch!) onto the pages.

Here is the book of earth. I made a stab bind softcover book using string, a dowel, green banana paper and white paper from Plaza.

This book contains only images that made me think of the earth.

All together now.

What I learned from making these books:
1. I STILL have difficulty cutting straight lines, even with a ruler and an xacto knife.
2. Don't worry about messing up a stab bind, you can always pull the string out and start over.
3. Don't cut the tail ends of the string too short, they won't tie together and you'll have to trim them, praying the book will stay together.
4. Yet again, Magnetic Poetry to the rescue!