How hoarding feeds what I make, though there are more hoards to be revealed

I got some questions about a book I showed on Instagram and here a few posts ago.  I made it ages ago and found it intimidating and so have only recently begun to work on the pages.

I painted paint sample brochures, the kind you get from hardware stores.  They are a variety of sizes and formats, but range from 8 inches by 8 inches to 9 inches by 12 inches or even bigger.  They are all either three or four folds, so open they are really large.  I painted them all with acrylics, with no real plan as to color or theme. I did it over about 3 or 4 days, so continuity was never a consideration.
I bound them into a book with a really simple coptic stitch binding and used some cloth tape that was used to tie up a delivery to help hold them together. I just covered bookboard with some nice paper that I had saved (two hoarder savings in the cover alone!) for the cover, it has a snakeskin texture that you can feel.

Some pics might help here... to show that the trifold and quadrofold pages can be seen in several ways, depending on how they are folded. The interactions between pages is VERY interesting to consider in creating pages.

The right side page here is the same in each of the next two pics.  The left page is folded differently.

Here the furthest left side is folded behind the center page.

Here the page is folded over the center part of the page.

As you can see from the next picture, the pages are different sizes, so the edges do not line up, but I really like being able to see other pages behind the one I am working on at the time.

This is the only "page" I feel is sort of finished,

 and in the following closeups you can see the other interesting part about making pages from paint sample books.  Although I did lightly sand the pages if they were shiny, the grid from the sample chips is still visible.  In some places I covered it with collage or something else, in others I used it.  I am still playing with how this works overall.

Left side:

Center:

Right side:

Finally... man this post got long.... I have the "red page" I am working on, and it is in pause mode while I think about it some more. I often work on more than one page at a time, so I thought I would show you my next "start" ...

 I have had this picture since the 1980's. Not sure exactly when I shot it.  It is of one of my friend who is also a photography nut.   I cropped it, played with the contrast, and printed it on my laser printer.  Then I did an image transfer using matte gel medium to a page in the journal.  It is on the "first side"  of a trifold page. so there is a totally different page on the left and the page could open further on the right. This page also has lots of semi hidden paint samples on it.  We shall see what happens next..

Journal 4 Cover

The covers were blank, and ended up looking like this:

Front Cover

Back Cover with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald that I love to look at.  The last line of The Great Gatsby.

Journal 4 Last two pages

These were the last two pages in Journal 4

The background were some Appalachain Trail maps that had elevation lines drawn on them.  That was the background on the left and I added a bigger MOO card separation.

The right side was a last MOO card separation and I wanted to leave the background print visible.

Journal 4 Pages 21 and 22

This "Before" gave me a problem by not matching until I realized this was the other side of the place where I removed the small page.   So, you will have to imagine that the little page with the red squares is not there. 

Another separated MOO card started this page out. 

And this was the other side.   I struggled with wanting to make the space behind the figure darker.  I wanted her to be walking into the light, but maybe it needs a darker space behind it despite the "story" I see here...

Journal 4, Pages 19 and 20

Lots of dark colors here to use,

This was another MOO card separation on the left, but I do like what I did there better.  The integration is a bit more effective to my eye.  It is from a photo I took years ago of the Coney Island Wonder Wheel, and the woman on the right small insert page is from an article I tore out years ago from somewhere about suffragettes.

The flip side is not so compelling, I think I got seduced by the idea of the Central Park map, when I cut away all but the paths inside the park and the water bits, I HAD to use them, maybe not! But there they are.  And the insert page is just there..

Journal 4 Pages 17 - 18

This book was the last one I made from the leftover prints, and I think there were more plain vanilla pages in it than in the other 3.  It is interesting that I really did find this book to be a struggle. It wasn't a quick book by any means and a lot of these pages are heavy with glue and more glue.

I have been pondering it a while, as I haven't yet got a "next book" going.

This set of pages are really an example of how much of a struggle I had here.  I love the left page..

It uses a lot of things I like to use and it feels like it tells a story.  That is me in the photo, by the way, age about 4.  It is one of a series of pictures I keep coming back to, using and re-using.
The insert... not so much and the other side of the little page was sort of OK.

and then there is the other side.  The background is some wallpaper I found somewhere, a MOO card separation and a piece of an older sunflower print. The paper at the bottom came from some paper that I rusted using some old New York Waterworks parts that came available when a lunatic driver up here ran over the fire hydrant on the corner late one night.  It was pretty exciting for about half an hour before they got a cap on it, and there were lots of rusted metal parts lying around, so I picked them up.

Japanese paper for toughness and rust for color.

Journal 4 pages 15 and 16

 Another one that went through a number of iterations:

and then didn't change markedly from the original print, I guess

Journal 4 pages 13 and 14

Plain vanilla start pages....

I was pleased with this group once it came together.  Experimenting with having the grid lines cross all the pages in all the stages was fun and the Sienna drawing is one of my favorite things.

Journal 4 Pages 11 and 12

This went through many many changes to become this:

Heavily taped over, image transfer, the red proved to be more than I could work around so I finally got rid of most of it.

Individually these were hard but I liked the final effect of the two pages together...

Journal 4 -- Pages 9 and 10

This was interesting because the paper on the right page was both smaller and different texture from any others in the book.  Crunchy textures, have no idea what it is.

Orchid, actual flower, prints from found leaves, photos and, on the right another MOO card separation

Map pieces and ink drops.  I liked carrying the map lines across multiple pages.  You'll see it again..

Journal 4, Pages 7 and 8

 This was clear on the left side but the colors on the right were pretty strong. The little page had squares on one side of it and so it was an interesting thing to address.

This was done early on and the little tree helicopters were all over the place and I incorporated some of them as well as some old envelopes again
I also cut out some of the squares in the little page.

The image on the page above is from the 9/11 memorial in 2003.  I was in Washington Square Park and this young girl was tending to a group of candles.  I keep coming back to this picture, and have used it in many other places.  When I fall in love with a picture I just keep on bringing it back.  This time it was from a MOO card that I separated. 

This is just to let you see how the cutout squares interact with the full pages. 

Journal Pages -- Book 4 pages 5 and 6

This was where the next pages started, it was a bit of a mess with the ticket stub glued onto the page with paint rather than glue of any sort..

And this is where it ended up.

The boy etc. is a photo I took, the letter is one of millions to my father when he was in the US during the war and his family was in Germany.

The girl is a flea market photo, and Romeo is an old Polaroid that has been hanging out for a long time looking for a home. .