Tag: collage journals

Danish Travel Journal

Dear Liza,

Yep, there is a new travel journal, and it’s heading your way! I will be bringing it this week when Grandpa Nelson and I visit you in Denmark.

As usual, I started with a nice thick mixed media spiral bound sketchbook. Their paper is good for writing, collage, and even watercolors, if you don’t get too wet.

My front cover is frenetic and busy, like I am feeling about the trip. I used a weird polar map projection and a compass rose to show travel, a flag and color scheme for Denmark, and words to tell about the excitement of anticipation.

Since most of our travel once we get to Denmark will be by car, my inside cover shows a road trip. The background started as a celestial map, and you can still see some of wording under the grey acrylic. I wanted a grey and red color scheme, and found all those little figures in a magazine ad for Target. Posca marker let me write in WHITE.

Since the back cover represents the end of the journey, it has words like ‘exhausted’ and ‘I had an enormous breakfast’ as well as things I hope to see. And just because I had them, I included the Danish national anthem in Danish and English.

Since every trip is different, every travel journal is different, and I can’t promise anything special. But I’ll show you what I come up with. Heck, you’ll probably see some of what I’m drawing while I’m drawing it.

And I will like that very much.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Telling Time

Dear Liza,

I found this book last week in a tiny free library. It is called “How to Tell Time”, published by Klutz Press. It is sort of a board book, like I have worked in before, but a slightly larger format, about 7 inches square. The cover is a board, the 24 pages are heavier-than-usual paper, and the binding is wire. These are the reasons I picked the book up.


I even spent an afternoon coating each page with some of Auntie Bridgett’s gesso, to get it ready for whatever I chose to do with it.

A few days later, I was feeling the need to do some thinking-through-collage. An idea was trickling through my brain but I couldn’t pin it down. When I started sorting through my collage papers, the trickle became a stream of thought, and pretty soon turned into a river.

Pieces of paper that I have looked at for months started fitting together to make part of a story. I pulled these out. A bit macabre for me, I admit. But then it made sense.

In the blink of an eye, the book “How to Tell Time” became about much more than using a clock. It became a way to outline my existence on this planet. How did I get to where I am now? What came first? What comes next? And what comes last?

I started laying the papers down and realized that the WHITE paper was too white… so I got it damp, sprinkled some loose tea and turmeric on it, and let it dry. Voila! Instant parchment.. You can see it here as a wing, and again as the plain piece just below it. It blends in well with my idea.

I liked it well enough to start gluing, liking it better as I went along. When the papers dried, I played around with colored pencils, then some very strong instant coffee, to get a warmer feel for the whole thing.

And it kept looking more like my questions.

So I’m going to use this book to collage my way through the timeline of my life. I figure this page will go at about page 22 out of the 24. Maybe I’ll even think of some more questions as I go along.

Love,

Grandma Judy