Long stitch bound journal

I wanted to make a blank book for my niece to use as a journal-catch all for her trip to Bolivia.  She will be in Sucre, studying Spanish for 3 months.  So, I based the cover loosely on Bolivian tapestry.  The cover is paper and embroidery floss.  The yellow diamonds are inlaid in the blue paper.  I chose long-stitch for the binding, to flow with the cover design.  Blank journals like this are good for saving ticket stubs, programs, food labels, other common paper things from the region one is visiting, as well as one's own memories, and messages added in their own hand by friends one meets and fellow travelers.

Long time no blog.  Well, it's early Show & Tell time.  Alisa Golden has a great blog that I follow, Making Handmade Books.  In January she showed a project she is doing with a weekly calendar.  I had an extra 2014 calendar, so I decided to use it as a kind of visual journal/media exercise book.  Here are my first few weeks' attempts.

The first one is 6 cropped images from some photos I took interpreting light.

In the second series, I wanted to deal with a distant image, a mid-range image, and a close-up image. Besides the printed out images, I used only green pencil and a black pen.

This third spread is not finished. The blank space will be tissue collage.  I wanted to work with transformation with this page. So I'm transforming the upper lefthand image into the lower right hand image.  I have used colored pencils and and a #2 lead so far.

I'll add future pages as I complete them.  I love this use of a previous year's calendar.

Well, it is winter

Polar Vortex blah blah blah. It's winter! I admit it. I don't want to venture out very far at 20 below, but come on -- suit up, protect your nose and cheeks and head out! If it's sunny and no wind, it's fine.  Of course I prefer it to be 0 or above.  This was actually taken on a below-0 day.  I had my car close by.  It was windy, but I couldn't wear gloves and take pictures at the same time. I'd brave the cold for up to 30 seconds, or until my fingers screamed at me, then I'd warm up in the car before heading out again.