Book 4

Little Miss Saigon's Party Dress

Functional Art

So. My cool Caribbean cousin posed the question that I have heard several different variations of over the past several days from Go, which is "What do you do with these books?"

Here are just 10 possibilities:

1. If they are small enough, get two, stick them in your ears and use them as earplugs. If you have children with extremely loud voices like I do, you will understand why this was the first idea that came to mind.
2. If it's large enough, you got yourself a very pretty sled.
3. Sit on the side of the road and throw them at passing cars.
4. Toss a bunch up in a tree, invite people over and sit back while they stand there in awe, wondering how in the world you were able to grow a book tree. Pass out tiny book seeds as party favors.
5. Tear the pages out and stuff your bra.
6. Three words: ping pong paddles.
7. Pretend you are a Venus Fly trap. Sit down with an open book in your lap, hands holding each side of the cover. When a fly eventually finds you and lands on your book, SNAP! Feed me, Seymour.
8. Stack them on your head and walk around while reapeating "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain."
9. Write your deepest, darkest secret in it and bury it in your neighbor's yard.
10. Apply rubber cement to the soles of your feet, step squarely onto two books and let dry. Go grocery shopping in your new book shoes.

See, the possibilities are really endless. Or you can use them for a journal, a photo album, a daily planner, or give them as gifts either blank or filled with appropriate text/pictures/photos.

Book 3

As this is the first book I've made with all my own materials, it is ownly fitting that I start giving these beauties names.
"An Egg That Was Boiled in an Un-Watched Pot After Rolling Around in Some Moss Without Gather Any"

Book 2

My First Book

Some Time Next Week

BOOKBINDING! BOOKBINDING! BOOKBINDING!

This Is Why I Don't Sleep

A lady planted a little seed in my brain last week and now I have a 6-inch bean sprout poking out of my ear. We were spraying down our spin bikes and chatting. She asked what I did besides teach spin, I told her I was an artist and she perked right up. "I'm an artist, too! I have a bookbinding studio."

I practically dropped my spray bottle. Bookbinding was my number one complete unrequited love back in college. It is in fact tied with Ossie Antonetti, the dreamy afroed volleyball player from Puerto Rico, who's life sized cardboard image graced my apartment wall until I moved out, got married and was told that, "No, he cannot be stapled gunned to our ceiling."

Bookbinding was the one class that I always wanted to take but never could get into. Sometimes, I'd go into the room where the class was held and breathe in the glue, the paper, the bone folders. And then I'd walk around and leer at the cool books being made, with all of the special papers and the special fibers and the special techniques and the special...specialnesses. Sigh.

So then this woman either handed me a wad of cash or said this, I don't remember which because I would be equally excited by either one: "Come to my studio. I'll teach you everything you need to know."

Uh oh.