Wired up

I knew when a friend said she was cleaning out a closet and had game boards, I would want those….

I mean- who wouldn’t?!

What I didn’t know was how much joy would come from making a little book out of scraps.

I had cut the boards into covers and backs and that had left small, skinny scraps which I pushed off onto the edges of my desk. 

Covers and backs had raw edges… I had contemplated what to use to cover these edges. 

The Ugly Art Club’s art prompt for January was teabag. I had so many used tea bags laying around.

As it turned out, I loved the look of the tea bags on the board edges.

Messy. 

For sure. Like I was picking matte medium off my fingers for days….

But I am a sucker for a square. And I had been saving found words that made me smile. So I used these words/ phrases on the books. 

Fast forward to the binding…. I figured I would use my wire binding machine.

But that poor thing has been pleasantly sitting in the closet collecting dust. To give you some insight, I had to glue the “feet” back onto the machine before I could use it. Lol.

I did post a short video to IG with a bit of the binding process…. I was amazed at the number of people that offered advice. But, the many more saying they had this contraption, but theirs too, was collecting dust.

I didn’t want to just hop into binding what I thought were my “good” books…. So I grabbed one of those small, skinny scraps on the desk to practice.

You know- to make sure I knew how to do this wire binding again…..

The initial board piece was small enough that I “dropped” it in. No edge to hold and adjust….

No. 

I had to make sure it was centered using other pieces to push the piece inside the machine and then, push the piece out after the holes were punched. 

I knew immediately that I liked the height of the piece. Didn’t I have another piece hanging out somewhere on this desk?! Yes. 

But, I couldn’t overlap the pieces. No, these would need to lay next to one another….

Looking around the studio, I noticed a thin cardboard box…. Perfect!

Boom.

Same process for the back. 

Add a pile of mixed sized papers…

and I would have a small scrap sampler book that makes me so incredibly happy.