i found this book at a yard sale recently. well, actually it was a park sale because it was located in a park. the book was a little tattered already and it cost something like 50 cents and it was perfect that i had it already. it doesn't say so on the cover but it's "Märchen" by Astrid Lindgren. i have a newer edition of this collection of tales - i got it for my birthday when i turned 8 or 9 i think.
i compared the contents and the newer one actually has two tales that were not in this one and this old one had one - "Mio, my Mio" - that is not in the newer one. i salvaged that...
so... i love the cover. i adore the tram - the old ones we have in vienna look very similar to it. it rides across a lake in this picture which is an illustration from "Im Land der Dämmerung" ("The Land of Dusk" i guess, i didn't find any translations) - one of my favourites of the short Astrid Lindgren tales. the tram can do that, you know, because "that's irrelevant in the land of dusk. that's irrelevant in the land that is not." i love all the creatures that take a ride, i love the fact that the boy steering the tram, Göran Petterson, doesn't see anything because the conductor's hat is too big for him, i love that the king is aboard too, wearing his crown...
there is everything in The Land of Dusk, the sun shines all the time in some places, moose talk, candy grows on trees and little boys with paralyzed legs can fly...
(the picture also reminds me of the scene in Spirited Away where it has rained so heavily that the land turned into the sea and the train has to go through the water. i love that train ride...)
anyway, the book is gutted now (i didn't take any pictures of that) and has been turned into something new:
i inked the edges of course... and i filled the cover with four new signatures of junk.
haha!
i managed! i had been wanting to do that with a nice book cover for ages and somehow i got scared whenever i thought i wanted to do it but now i finally did.
it's my first "real" junk journal because all the papers i used to refill it are wastepaper of some sort. most of them are my "mop-up" papers from blotting off spray inks, cleaning off stamps, scribbling off markers, testing colour combinations and new ink pads, etc...
not all the papers have the same size and many of them have torn edges and creases.
i put in some business envelopes that came with bank stuff and bills and such. i like that i can put something in them and then see a peek of it when i flick through the journal...
there is a chocolate wrapper in there too.
and an old receipt my hubby saved for me when he found it in the back of a book... (i still have to cover up the back of that pamphlet i used to protect my work surface when painting once - it's an election folder and the painted front looks funky but i don't want those smug stuck-ups' faces on the back of it in my journal...)
the sun, moon and stars papers came from another work in progress when i enthusiastically started stencilling away and then realised i had some measurements wrong... well, nothing goes to waste!
i put in the negative-piece of a butterfly-die-cutting-session. i just love all the butterfly shaped holes in the paper. the text is columbian and actually about butterflies which i didn't know when i cut them. i love it when that happens.
wonderful what a rich texture can be achieved when one is not paying the least bit of attention to what happens to the paper! when i think it's getting too full or brittle i just put it aside and take a new sheet - which usually isn't new either. i have a huge stack of my hubby's proofs - a couple of hundred of pages with some texture already on them - yay! but then when i take a look at the paper later i'm all stunned. i love this sort of accidental art...
i have started decorating it more already. i'm using the leftovers from the papers i used for the pages to make tuck spots and pockets and i'm adding the illustrations and some text from the book too.
the inside cover has an illustration on it already...
i know some people would probably say something like: "why cut up a perfectly good book?" and "how can you do such a thing?" and the truth is that it wasn't easy at first and i had to get used to it. i was taught that books were something precious that need to be handled with care when i was little. and i still believe that and i teach my kids to take care of books too. i would never cut up a book that is brand new (unless it's really crappy and deserves it and has an awesome cover) or one that is of great value, be it antiquarian value or sentimental value.
but used books that are offered for 50 cents on a yard (park) sale or in a thrift shop don't have much to lose. either they are bought and read and loved again - that's the best case scenario - or they are not bought and thrown away because the previous owners want to get rid of them. most of them are old and broken and never were great in the first place... (there are exceptions though.)
but the other thing that can happen to those books is to fall into the hands of an artist who will repurpose them and give them a second life...