A Package for You

At first, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I was toying with the idea of extending the map I had made last week into part of this week’s theme, but I couldn’t come up with anything that really appealed to me, so I needed a new idea. I then stared at the books we made last week to see if maybe the form could inspire the content, and it did in a way. The first book we made was constructed out of an interoffice envelope, which made me remember the package that I’d just received last Thursday. This is important because the package that I’d received was one that I’d sent my friend as a Christmas present that she’d never gotten. Since I’d practically mailed that package two months ago, and my friend had yet to get it, I expected that it was lost, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw it sitting at my seat. What’s even more coincidental is that as I was driving home, I was on the phone with my friend (the same one who never received her present from me) and we were joking about the lost package and imagining what might’ve happened to it, when lo and behold, it was on my kitchen table! The package that had been lost was now found, and there was my form and content.
To construct the book, I used a large envelope (of the same kind as the present) and filled it out as I did to the original package (and the one that I sent back to my friend, this time with insurance so that it would get to her). I then made slits on either end of the package so that I could stick a ribbon through it to make it look more like a present, and to help keep it shut since the envelope wanted to lay flat as intended, and not be folded into a book. I folded up paper, used my bone folder to crease it, punctured the paper and envelope with my awl, and then sewed it all together. I wish I would’ve had thicker thread like the kind we had used in class, but I really didn’t have the energy to go out and buy any (since I’ve been sick all week with the flu), and so in an effort to make a tighter bind, I sewed it twice, once with red thread and once with green thread (I was going for a Christmas theme). I then decorated my pages and made the book read like a journal by providing entry dates, and brief descriptions of the events that transpired on those days. I’ve always struggled with hierarchy, so I’m not sure how successful I was in that area, but I tried to provide a balance of words and images (I used only images that I thought were most important to the story). So in a nutshell, I recreated the package and its contents that I sent to my friend, only I made it into a book. The book’s last pages are composed of the note I received from my mystery “sender,” and I felt that that was the best way for my book to end.
On a more technical note, I would’ve liked for my pages to fit inside the covers/cases rather than stick out like they are, (when I eyeballed them, I thought they would work, but I was wrong) but I will know to trim them first next time before I write/design them (or leave more room on the edges for trimming afterward) because with this go around, I saw that if I was to go back and trim them, I’d be trimming off words/images which would be worse than having pages that were slightly too long. Lesson learned.
I had a lot of fun making this book, especially because I felt like I was making an amazing story more than words, but an actual, tactile experience, that I could share with others, which in a way, is part of the definition and purpose of a book.