caricature girl

My new altered book journal...

This past summer I have done very little "visual" journaling. I have been drawn more to words and thoughts on their own (and the realizations that come with them), than finding the pictures and images within the thoughts.

This fantastic little hardcover book had called out to me at a garage sale in the spring and I knew it would be my next visual journal, when I was ready to create it. I am very discriminating when it comes to what books I use for my own personal use. The weight, the dimensions and the thickness are all very important qualities to me and help make up the decision of what each book will become for me; whether it be a daily journal or a sketchbook, a travel journal or a demo journal.

Friday night I wandered over to my studio after dinner and this little book practically jumped into my arms. With all my kids now officially in school, it was time... so I sanded and gessoed the cover and then allowed it to tell me what it needed to become.
Here is the back cover...

On the inside front cover, I always like to begin with a thought that is relevant to my life at the moment. Since I am currently reading the book Exuberance, the passion for life by Kay Redfield Jamison, the thoughts within it are very much in my mind at the moment.

Here is an excerpt from the book...

Yet it is the infectious energies of exuberance that proclaim and disperse much of what is marvelous in life. Exuberance carries us to places we would not otherwise go—across the savannah, to the moon, into the imagination—and if we ourselves are not so exuberant we will, caught up in the contagious joy of those who are, be inclined collectively to go yonder. By its pleasures, exuberance lures us from our common places and quieter moods; and —after the victory, the harvest, the discovery of a new idea or an unfamiliar place—its gives ascendant reason to venture forth all over again. Delight is it own reward, adventure its own pleasure.

If you are interested in creating an altered book like this, we will be making one in my altered book classes this fall at my studio.