Earlier this year my friend Joon (instagram and etsy) sent me this little book that she made for me, and I treasure it so much.
Book by Joon Wilkinson, music by Grandaddy – Am180
I finally got around to making the above video to share with you. I don’t know if Joon really knows how much she was speaking my language. We both really love making treasures from what might otherwise be scrap papers.
I immediately had to make another little video of a book that was given to me as a child.
Book made by my grandma, music Detektivbyran – Rymden i en lada
They’re almost the exact same size! The pages move quickly so you may not have been able to read, but it was made by my grandma for me in the spring of 1980. I would have been 2 years old at the time.
It’s just one of the many things that probably helped form my aesthetics and I’m sure contributed to my love of little stapled books.
I remember when I first realized how much I loved making little stapled books. I was working at the local weekly newspaper and as offices often do, we used old scrap paper, quartered up, as note paper. I started stapling the edges like a binding and doodling on the pages, writing notes to coworkers and making lists, etc. on pages.
They kind of resembled this. I actually made an animated gif of this complete book which can be seen here.
Or this. Over the years I’ve made plenty of staple books and variations on them. Here are some more books I’ve made below.
And then of course I often have little books in my etsy shop, but eeep, when I just went to go get the link I saw a frightening low quantity of little books. I have plenty made, so perhaps that should be a project for Friday, photograph and list little books to my shop.
I think I told you once that Jason and I, for the first 6 years of our marriage, wrote notes to each other every day in little journals. I always left him a note before I went to work (while he was still sleeping) and he wrote me one at night before he went to bed (while I was already sleeping). Since I quit my job, we stopped our journals, but we decided to return to our roots and start our note journals again. We’re using the one that looks just like the one on the right in the fanned-out picture, fifth from the bottom of this post, that you gave me after Na-Da last year. So, thank you for the inspiration in multiple ways!
The book from your grandma is adorable! My grandma was probably my first introduction to mail art. She used to send letters with cut outs of pictures from magazines or comics, and fancy lettering on the envelope. I never really thought about how that might have contributed to my later interest in mail art.