Sunday, March 31, 2019

Seasick Much? ...and a crazy "coincidence"


I love big pieces of paper. They have such personality. Even a blank, undecorated large sheet of paper moves and warbles with its own spirit and voice. And a uniquely decorated piece of paper can have the added quality of sheer beauty.


Needless to say, I'm sometimes reluctant to cut such a piece of paper up and parse it out to its various project destinies, however awesome they might be in turn!


This particular sheet of marbled Italian paper came from Columbia Art and Drafting, who has the largest art-paper supply I've ever seen. The very last of its kind in the slot, at least until they order more, it's in fact the only one of its kind if we also consider the unique nature of hand-marbled sheets.


There were dozens of different marbling designs, but I liked this one for its green swirled-potion sloshing effects . . . provided one doesn't look at it too long on an upset stomach! For a leather-bound compendium of potion recipes, however, it's a perfect addition. Specifically, for the inside covers.


Such an amazing vortex of colors, blotches and swirls . . .


. . . Blaouurp!


Seasick much?


I glued the pieces of paper inside the covers as frontispieces, accompanied by other leaves of decorative art paper, some of which do in fact contain leaves! Examples of these "plant papers" are eucalyptus and green onion. This marbled frontispiece has a blotch that resembles a face --- who knows, somebody someday might suspect this tome of being haunted or cursed!


The covers. One is finished; the other just needs its pressed-brass Gothic embellishments glued on.


Check out these endpapers! Both Scrap and Columbia Art supplied a variety of beautiful papers for the extra decorative leaves.

But the strangest part of all was yet to come.


With extra craft time on hand, I decided to knock out those tedious page numbers. After all, I'm ready to start using these things! Leaving one blank grace page for the title page as before, I began to number the random groupings of sketchpad pages, scrapbook papers and translucent craft sheets, leaving not a page counted, even if it was too dark or too translucent to take a proper number on both sides.

As I neared the end, I got a funny feeling and thought: "No way. No effing way. That is just too fucking weird. You cannot be serious. . . ."


But it happened again. Not counting the decorative leaf I'd added that morning, my numbering landed precisely, magically, smack-the-fuck on 700.

Cue the eerie music. These were random, uneven-sized, pick-and-choose style signatures of all different papers, chosen as much for thickness in gluing convenience or my liking the look of several scrapbook sheets together. Maybe I'd take out a few sheets in one and add it to the other before binding, to balance the thickness of both books by eyeballing them, or regrouping one scrapbook sheet with its fellows in the other volume. There is no logical way (besides a deadeye for paper-stack thickness!) I could possibly have landed right on 700, not one but two times!!! And this is after my additions and assembly with the end leaves and covers. Too. Weird.

In the absence of logic, we are left with magic. With the unexplained. This is the sort of "coincidence" that, a few hundred years ago, might have got me burned for being in league with the devil. These days, bitch here just be like, "Welp. . . I have no idea how, but I must be 'dialed in' somehow!" So if you need a bookmaker with possibly untapped powers who has yet to discover their rhyme or reason, well. . . .

Who knows. Maybe the books are already bewitched!


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