Putting Journals Together Part 1

A very long time ago.... back when I first retired from having to work outside the house every day, I did two things.  I got a dog....

And then I encountered a book that really changed how I thought about how I wanted to spend my "retirement". 

Lk Ludwig has an interesting do it yourself approach to photography, book binding and collage.  I loved this book and still go back to it first when I am looking for ideas.  NOW... does she give instructions for exactly what I am doing? Nope, but she gave me some ideas and I sort of went with them. 

I  built up a collection of 4 collaged "books".  I started doing them in 2014, I had some decent paper and I made 4 pamphlet stitched books. I didn't work in a straight line through the books, but I did finish one before I did the second and I did date them as I went.  I am slightly notoriously slap dash, but dating things that I am working on is one of my main rules. 

These are the covers.  The books are about 4" by 6" and contain generally 25ish pages.  Not all the pages are the same size, there were some leftover bits of the same paper that I just bound in as they fit. I will do some content pictures and there are some earlier in the blog that I will link to from each book that was covered here.. 

Number 1is dated June, July, August and September 2014.  At that point I realized it was going to take longer than I thought and I stopped using months and began using month ranges and years. 

Number 2 is dated September 15 2014 and continues to February 23, 2015. 

Number 3 runs from February 25, 2015 until May 18, 2015.  The last pages are here. and the same applies, you can page back through a number of the pages, although they may look different now.

Number 4 is the last one, dated May 19, 2015.  I finished it last year in November 2016, and I documented it here on the blog.  If you want to see other pages, just click on previous and work your way back. as I documented a bunch of this book as it was then. The first pages are here.My nature is that I never think something is ever really done.  I know I worked in all of these books for at least another 2 or 3 years. As of 2017, however, there were no more empty spaces or places, and I began to think about next steps. I also started working in my big huge collage journal, and it was taking a lot of my thought.  So I began to consider how to keep these from getting lost. 

I will post the process with pictures over the next week or so.