Picking Apart the Creative Process

Keep in mind that this project is still evolving. I'm going to step you through the various processes I've gone through while working these pages over the past couple of days. It amazes me how much this book has transformed already.

Step one: Taking my black gel pen, I started swirling over all the pages in random line patterns. I darkened some of the edges and created more swirls shooting off from each line. Working on this sparked the next step of this process.

Step two: There are several pages in this book that really don't interest me (even after altered), so I decided to tear them right out. Because this is a spiral bound journal, it didn't damage the construction of the book. There were also some pages where I liked one side, but not the other. In those cases, which worked out to be three times throughout the book, I sandwiched them together with another page using a glue stick. All in all, about ten or twelve pages came out. This will also create more "expansion" room when these pages are more heavily worked later on.

Step three: Using a one inch square hole punch, I punched holes every five pages in different locations on each page. I put the punches aside.

Step four: Every two pages following the punched pages, I affixed the squares in different locations using a glue stick. This part of the process required a lot of thought because, in some cases, I liked how both sides of the square looked. I had to play around with the pages to see which side of the square worked best with the colors.

Step five: I grabbed my black gel pen again and created frames around each square I affixed to the pages. Then, I swirled one or two lines off from each frame and added some thickness and dimension to some sections to add drama.

As you can see the early steps of this project is pretty simplistic in terms of the tools and materials being used. This will become more intensive as I work my way through the pages. Originally, I wanted to "finish" each page spread before moving on to the next. I decided against that, however, and found that adding these "layers" to each page throughout the book is making this project feel more whole and it's very exciting.

What do I plan to do next?

I have a slew of collage materials, random papers and rubber stamps. I think I'm going to collage next, then layer some stamps over that. From there, I'd like to add some interactive elements like pockets, tags and envelopes. It's still up in the air, but you can be sure to see an article about the next five steps I've taken with this book.