Glue!

I’ve been preoccupied the past few days with transcribing old letters. I’ve made good progress on that front and am happy with the work rhythm that’s emerging. Two to three letters a day is doable, even for an a-motivated, essentially lazy person like me.

I’ve also been arting, but not anything that’s fit to upload. At least, not yet. I got a few backgrounds painted in my composition book journal. One of them is especially peachy. As the An Art a Day theme for this week is the Arts & Crafts movement, I think I’ll do a viney, Art Nouveau-ish type design on the boarder. The background itself was sponged, so the finished product is a lovely mottled beige. Yes, I said beige. No, really, it is lovely. It’s somewhat like an earlier background I did, only a bit darker.

I’ll upload a scan of the new spread as soon as I finish it.

And now for the glue. I finished my glue book last night. The final entry wasn’t anything special and I probably won’t upload it, but it’s done, done, done. Now, I need to think about the next glue book. I liked working in composition books. The size is perfect. But, I found that they bulk up very quickly, even when half the pages are removed. The spine on the one I just finished is way too tight. It’s about to split. I could remove even more pages, I suppose, but since a thin strip needs to be left along the spine edge (to keep the opposite page from falling out), that still leaves an awful lot of bulk at the spine. I think this is due in large part to the way I work. I almost always do a two-page spread with paper–sometimes multiple layers of paper–glued across the gutter. So, no matter how many pages I remove, it won’t cut down on the bulk along the spine.

I’m thinking I may take an entirely different approach to my next glue book. Instead of using a book or journal, I think I’ll use paper, chip board, or whatever ends up working best and bind my own book. If I do the spreads before I bind the book, then bind single-spread signatures with spacers between each one, that should fix the problem. It will also create a problem, though, as I will only be able to do a two-page spread on the interior of each signature. The exterior of each signature will have to be made up of two one-page pieces. If I use chip board or heavy water color paper, I could use the single pages for drawing (mmm, cray pas) and the interiors for gluing. I just got some yummy paper, so I’m going to spend the weekend playing around with options.