I keep journals, lots of journals -- with an anachronistic nineteenth-century attention to detail and insistence on handwriting. I have a different journal for every workshop or class I have taken with notes on process, feelings, people I met, photographs, etc.
My main journal is about ideas. It is where I explore the concepts behind my work and collect impressions, quotes, words. Lots of words.
Well, I just finished filling up my latest journal and it is time to make a new one. This is a kind of ritual that involves decorating the book, numbering its pages and covering it with some loved scrap of fabric.
I use a store bought blue-ruled hardbound book. Then add the embellishments. This could take a couple of weeks. This time, I bought some new rubber stamps on Etsy, where some really fine artists hand-carve rubber stamps. And they are beautiful, special, very inspiring.
I number the all the pages in the book using a rubber stamp set.
I decorate the title page
Then I add an index.
Then I decorate the last page.
When I cover it with fabric, I have to also prepare some end papers to tuck the fabric into.
All a big production. But one of my great joys in life.
