Random thoughts

Mentally, I want to be here. On a boat.

Reality is the dog park

Watching my two nut cases hunt a squirrel

Gracie trying to talk the squirrel down out of the tree. It didn't work.

A bound, cardboard small journal

Some of the 24 pages

Getting older is not for the weak of heart, mind, or soul. You can either curl up into a ball and complain about every single facet of your life, or you can ignore the physical shortcomings, and move on down the road. One of the ways I cope with my pain is to work on something creative.

There is a free class online created by Carolyn Dube, involving torn up cardboard. I did that last winter, and it was a lot of fun. Check it out on her blog. If you click on the "freebies" tab, the class is called "Permission to Play". Shortly after taking that class, I found a package of 12 pieces of cardboard in my stash. Already cut, just waiting for something to happen. Imagine that? So I applied gesso to both sides with a brayer, and started slapping on paint. Before I got carried away, I thought I'd better figure out how to bind this sucker. It's over 2 inches thick when the pages are stacked.

After consulting with Cathy, I decided to use bright yellow duct tape. I laid 2 pieces of cardboard side by side, cut two small pieces of tape and taped those pages together, then folded them up and set aside. Did that until I had all done, then placed a set of two next to a set of two, and taped those together. When I had my 3 sets of 4 pieces, I stacked them evenly, and ran duct tape over the back and around to the front cover and side cover. To better help hold them together, I cut a piece of cardstock (the green paper in the first photo), ran it through my adhesive machine, and adhered that to the spine and covers.

Now I can go back an finish the pages, including the yellow duct tape as part of the pattern and colors. One of the fun aspects of this project is the effects you can get applying paint with a brayer to the cardboard. The ridges cause the roller on the brayer to skip a bit. Love that.

Enjoy your day.
Linda