Literary Crafts

I never thought I would be a crafty person but I have to admit that books really influence the kind of crafts I love to do. I know that DYI Dammit did not have crafts that resonated with me but I have been on a journey of embracing some very bookish crafts.

A lot of my blog entries start out as reading journal entries in journals that I designed myself.

 Not only do I find writing therapeutic, I love cutting up images and pasting them in collages on composition notebooks into designs that resonate with me. I usually love doing more macabre images, however, I have been craving images that make me think of a happily ever after story lately….which is why I wanted to design journals with dogs and Disney images recently!

 I love finding things like prints and images that can be made into fun journals. I have used things like old calendars, magazines, playbills and postcards to make the kinds of journals that I want to write in. I also find it therapeutic to cut things up and glue them into arrangements that resonate with me. I am embedding my fingerprint into the way the books look, not just the pages that I write in.

I have also been more interested in coloring in coloring books recently as well. There is something about picking up crayons or coloring pencils that feels like I am doing SOMETHING when I feel like not just sitting around and wanting to do something more creative. I struggled with this for awhile because I am not reading a book when I am doing this and I love finding ways to fill my mind…nor am I creating my own pictures. But sometimes I need a more passive activity and coloring in my coloring books seemed like a great thing to do while I was watching Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu. (A show that I had to watch by the way because I LOVED the book when I read it as a Book of the Month selection back in 2017). Of course since books and tea go hand in hand for me those are great themes for my coloring books!

For a long time I felt like I was not a crafty person because I do not like things like needlepoint, knitting or sewing. However I went on a roll when I realized that I could make things that tie in with my more literary interests. I know some bookworms may squirm at the idea of cutting old book covers up but sometimes when I am at thrift shops and used bookstores and I see a really cheap book with a cool cover I can’t help but buy the book for its cover….because I want to cut it up into something like a journal or a bookmark that I know I would love to use! 

 Making these things actually makes me feel like I am interacting with books in a new way as I have become more aware of the visual representations and the handiwork that can go into the image of a book.  While I do play around with other people's images it is satisfying to see the kind of arrangements that I can make!