A Journal In My Future

Last night DH wanted to go to our local art supply store for some posterboard.  After finding what he considered to be the perfect weight, he asked me how I was coming along on my leather-bound journal.  Since I hadn't done any work at all on the journal, I was able to say that I had other projects in front of it.  But we looked through papers - handmade, hot and cold pressed, watercolor, pastel, drawing and sketching, finally ending up with a larger sketchpad for drawing with a slight texture, but not as deep a texture as the oil pastel paper that I had also loved.  I will cut that up and start making signatures of the pages soon, and I'll probably have to take another look at the journals that I liked at Renaissance Fest to see how they are binding their signatures into their journals.  I really loved them and had decided to try and make one for myself because I love to make my own and because I'm too broke to buy one of theirs for myself.  I have all of the components - the paper, the leather, the closures - so it seemed reasonable.  But looking through my bookbinding books late last night, I can't find specific directions for the type of binding that I recall their using.  I can get the signatures together, but that's as far as I'll be able to go until August.  (Isn't the pictured journal amazingly fun?  It's a design idea, I won't copy it but there are aspects of it that I might put into my own journal.) 

I set the colors on my silk and washed out the resist last night.  I'm in love.  The colors are bright and vibrant and exactly what I had wanted.  Now I have the resist that I had down at the horizon that needs to be painted.  I will put the silk back into it's frame tonight, put a small amount of resist back onto the fabric, and touch up the small amount of white at my horizon.  Or I will look at it again tonight and agree with DH who says that he rather likes the white.  But I just can't make up my mind completely.  I just know that I'm very happy with the colors and imagery and that the whole project, as it shifts into it's final stages, is turning out to meet my mental imagery and project requirements.  And that's important because I want to get this completed and move on to the next two projects that are perched in my mind.