Seriously.
Your recycling suggestions on the last post were great.
I've tried most of them out, too!
I don't think I have photos of them all (I was giving them away as fast as I was making them at first), but I do have some to share.
Dear Reader sarahrosevancamp suggested using maps or trail guides as book covers, and letting the young campers use their books as journals.
I made some covers from both.
I really liked the maps.
I was trying to get the national forests and parks in the ones I made for the lovely VanCampers.
And, of course, I had to get our fair city on the cover of one of them.
When you have to cut from a large paper like a map, overlay an 8 1/2" x 11' sheet of transparent paper and move it around (until you can see that the images you want will be on the front cover) before cutting.
I love using the paper beads on these - picking through that growing pile of color to find just the right bead - but it does mean they can't be mailed as easily (read: inexpensively).
The trail guides were published on 8 1/2" x 11" paper, with landscape orientation, so I just reversed the folds and made these books wider than they are long.
The photos were perfectly placed for the covers that way.
I'll probably go back and add beads, even though I am mailing these, because, well, I just have to.
Dear Reader mAuRa suggested recycling a catalog or magazine cover.
I used the cover of a September 1952 Better Homes and Gardens magazine to make her little giftlet.
That lead, of course, to leafing through the magazine, and I decided to make a few book covers from some of the ads featured therein.
Since Dear Reader Kristen suggested using food magazines or cookbooks to make the cover (and filling it with recipes for a wedding shower), I thought one of these might do the trick.
I didn't get a photo, but it just happened to work out that the back sides of these have recipes from the magazine on them.
Dear Reader Auntie Chickie suggested using a Farmers Almanac or a beloved PeeChee folder (any of you remember those?), but I didn't have either of those on hand.
Since my supply of vintage magazines came from her, I think I will have to send her one of these, instead.
Dear Reader Fran suggested old photos, greeting cards, or paperback book covers, but I didn't have anything along those lines that was large enough.
Instead, I used a page from my old handwriting workbook to make her cover.
Dear Reader Annski suggested using old calendar covers, but then she came to play in Gwen's studio, and she brought me one she'd made for me before I could get around to doing it myself.
Isn't this a most cheerful little book?
Dear Reader Jenny suggested grocery sacks or coffee bags.
I think if I had coffee bags big enough to make myself a book cover, I would be sniffing it all the time, instead of writing in it.
Grocery sacks I do have, and I love things made from the humble brown 'poke'.
I'm sorry I don't have any photos of that, but Dear Reader Jenny will have her own soon.
Thanks again, for all your suggestions.
And a big thank you, too, to each of you who have asked me to please hurry up and post again.
I have been unbelievably busy these past few months and, since I have missed writing, it's nice to know that I've been missed as well.
Now, in the 'totally unrelated' column of today's post, I want to show you this photo:
I call it "Little Man's Trail".
He was visiting last Sunday, and having a little afternoon snack of iced coffee and popcorn.
He knows he can't take food out of the kitchen, but something was pulling his attention elsewhere.
He abandoned the coffee first.
Then the popcorn.
And the shoes must've been slowing him down.
I love it.
And I love this:
That Big Man on the right used to play with these same Legos when he was the size of the Little Man on the left.
But I think I gave him too much to eat, because he got, like, really big and tall and stopped playing with Legos.
And now...
...I will sign off with this little teaser photo of what's coming next:
I'm making something(s) from my growing collection of paper beads and Scrabble tiles.
And this is the clean part of my kitchen table.