I went to the “casual artists’ reception” for the altered book thing – it was a little awkward ’cause I didn’t know who to talk to but everybody was very nice. I only stayed for like half an hour because I had dance class but as I was leaving I was told that originally They were only going to put the top 3 books in the special collection, but They liked them all so much that all the books will be offered a spot. I like my book but I’m not THAT attached to it – so yay, I’ll be in the special collection. I’m not sure what that means – probably that they’ll be shoved in a vault somewhere and never see the light of day again, but still, it sounds neat.

So that’s that!

My brother is coming up tomorrow night and I’m going to DC this weekend; I’m working on my costume and my dancing and also I go to some job 5 days a week. I’m usually That Overachievery Girl Who Has Time for Everything but lately I find myself with far too little! I make up for it by carrying around a notebook – not something I’ve ever done before since I have a pretty good memory, but I currently don’t have the time to dump everything on the page at the end of the day like I used to. So now I just do it throughout the day. It’s working pretty well actually – I have tons of fragment-seeds that are growing in mah brainz. I’m OK with the lack of time because I’m just doing other things right now – I’ll come back to my journals and books soon enough.

I just got an email letting me know that my altered book has been selected to be in the library’s exhibit (along with like 50 other ones), which I assume means I didn’t place top 3, booo (there were sweet prizes for the top 3). But I get to be in the exhibit which is neat – I’ll stop by and see what the top 3 look like. No I did not google-stalk the other email addresses the message was sent to in order to retroactively check out the competition, why would you even say that. But, based on my not-stalking, it does appear that several For Real Artists also entered so I’m pleased to even be with them in the exhibit!

This is becoming increasingly complicated. I hope I can finish it this week. Don’t worry, I’m still working on it so it (theoretically) won’t look like a four year old made it; I just like taking pics of the progress to compare to the finished thing.

I’m liking this project because the text has informed a lot of what’s going on. I started out with an idea of my own but I really wanted to actually incorporate parts of the book text, so I kind of flipped through and found some little bits that I liked. I’m really happy with how it’s all fitting together!

I think my favorite thing about this sort of thing is I get to figure out the best way to manifest my idea (ha, that sounds so new agey) – it pretty much never works the way I think it will so I have to figure out Plan Bs and adjust as I go. I don’t expect I’ll ever get to the point where I can just make something the way I want it right away – and really, if I could do that, I’m not sure I’d enjoy it as much. It definitely gets frustrating but when it’s all over it’s so satisfying!

Sometimes I need to stop to clean off my table … for obvious reasons. It’s a little ridic (the Botticelli book weighs like 100 pounds so I use it to press things that are drying)