It's all about the paper products

Amazon gift certificates are the best! A kind reader sent me a gift certificate last night and I used it immediately, lol.

I ordered the book Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End by David Gibson. Yay! Twitter graphic tweeted by Matt Smethurst, lol-

I use a small, leather blank journal with thick handmade paper for notes during sermons and small group Bible study. I love it because it's small and therefore portable. The paper is thick and stands up to painting on or collaging, which I occasionally do in order to illustrate a thought or insight I'd had. The paper feels good to the touch, also important. The clasp is metal and medieval looking which is a style I enjoy. I'm almost to the end of this notebook so it's wonderful I can order a backup to have on hand for when I need another one.

I love paper products overall. I'm a sucker for notebooks, journals, paper, legal pads, and ephemera. I take just as long choosing refrigerator pads to put on the fridge as I do for my spiritual journal and my online classes' notebooks. And you had me at Post-it.

Along with the notebooks are the careful selections of the pens I use. I have arthritis in my hands so I need a thicker pen. I like retractable so I can 'close' the point and it won't make stray ink marks all around, which I hate. I like ball point and not gel or marker type pens, for the same reason, no stray ink marks. I prefer black ink to blue or colors. The ink needs to lay down on the paper immediately with no warm up, and spread smoothly as I go. And the pen should be pretty. The design should be delicately balanced when I hold it, with a nice taper, and overall pleasing to use and to look at. You didn't know there was so much to choosing a pen, did you?

A friend gave me some Paper Mate pens a few years ago. They have become my preferred pen. I love them. The Paper Mate Silhouette is my absolute favorite, it meets all the above requirements for use by moi. The Silhouette Paper Mate is is a pen that is becoming hard to find, though. The pens she gave me are so good it's taken a few years to run out, so I ordered some Paper Mate pens with my gift certificate, This one isn't a Silhouette but it is also a good pen.

I've used journals of all kinds throughout the years. I don't really write down my thoughts and emotions like a diary, but I use them for picture thoughts, insights into things, collages and so on. Here are a few of my journals.

Clockwise. The leftmost large fabric journal with the sunflower on the front and the turned cover is actually a placemat I'd bought at the Lubec Historical Society annual July 4th yard sale sometime in the early 2000s. I turned it into a journal using a pamphlet stitch.

The beaded journal is festooned with sequins overlaid on black velvet. The paper is good. I rarely use it though...

The flowered one is a journal I'd started about the town I was living in. It has a hand written introduction and pasted-in scraps of life in the town. I started that one in 1990.

The green journal on the right is a Fabriano journal I use for an art journal. I'd written about finding a journal with Fabriano paper here. This one was started in 2016.

The brown ring journal is a Strathmore Visual Journal from a second hand store. Strathmore is another well-known paper outlet. I wrote about finding this expensive and lovely notebook, here. It's another art journal. I really prefer smaller ones to larger. It's from Nov. 2016.

The red small journal is one I'd made. The cover is paste paper and the inside contains hand written thoughts on spiritual books I'd been reading. That one dates to sometime around 2000-2001. I have a LOT of these little notebooks I'd made for the same purposes.

The red one is my very first journal. My parents gave me a trip to London for my graduation. It was a Spring school trip along with other seniors in my High School. Yes, our field trips were to foreign countries. I wrote about what I saw and did and that little journal from 1978 started me both on my world travels and my obsession with chronicling everything I see and do in some kind of journal. I have other travel journals, too, of various kinds, but you get the idea.

I like paper, journals, and notebooks! With me, it's all about the paper products. I think I'll always be a Luddite when it comes to notebooks. I don't have a cell phone and I don't like keeping track of things on any electronic device, portable or not. I love the feel of notebook with a fine paper, and writing my ideas, lists, and thoughts with a well-balanced pen. Blackberry calendar just doesn't have the same thrill for me.

How about you? Do you like notebooks? Keep it all on your phone? Use some other method? Or none at all?

Some paste paper bookmarks I made a while back

Paste paper

Paste paper is a fun activity that does not take too much time or too many materials. And what materials the recipe and activity do use, are normally found at home. No worries about having to find or buy exotic items for this project! Paste paper is actually decorating existing blank paper, using flour and dishwashing liquid etc. It is the glycerin in the dishwashing liquid that allows the paint to look like it is suspended, giving it that distinctive 3D effect.

I like to use the finished product for book binding, bookmarks, hand made cards, journals, collage, picture frames, you name it.

Here is a recipe I use, copied from a class I took at the Portland (ME) Museum of Art in the 1990s. It works well and once your paste has cooled, have at it!

Paste paper recipe

Boil 6 cups water in large pot
Meanwhile, mix 1 ½ cups four and 1 ¾ cups cold water with whisk
Take flour/water mixture and slowly drop into boiling water. Mix together. Take off heat immediately.
Mix 2 Tablespoons Dawn dishwashing liquid into flour paste.
Let cool. If too many lumps, can strain with cheesecloth/ Mixture should be smooth, and have the consistency of pudding.

Tips:
--Can use the paint from the craft center art Wal-Mart, the small bottles cost less than $1.
--Soft As Silk cake flour gives a nice consistency to the paste that is thinner. Although you can try many kinds of flour as well as corn starch to see how results vary.
--This recipe makes a good amount for a class but a lot for personal, home use. Since it makes a LOT for personal use, you can cut it in half.
--The paste stays good if placed in the fridge, for up to a week.

Select your paper, whether it be Xerox printing paper, cardstock, special paper, etc. Wet it by holding it under a running faucet for a moment or using a wet sponge. Smooth it on a flat surface with paper towel or newspaper underneath, flattening it and also getting out all the air or water bubbles. As mentioned, mix some paste in a small bowl with paint. Use a sponge or good brush to smoothly wipe the paint over the paper you have selected. Use a found implement to draw or drag through the paint on the paper, making designs. When satisfied, use a second color. The two colors do not mix, but stay suspended and separate. You can really have fun with making designs either precise or abstract. Lay paste papered paper on newsprint to dry or hang on a line inside with clothespins. Keep the cats away!

When the papers are dry, stack them and either press them with a heavy book on top or you can actually iron them (color side down) with an iron on low. Now you have a pretty stack to use as a quick greeting card or project-in-waiting. And have a wonderful afternoon paste papering!

I use simple acrylic paints from Wal-Mart. The small bottles are about $1 or you can experiment with any kind of paints: gouache, oil, watercolor...the entire fun of paste paper is that there is no harm in experimenting. It's only one sheet of paper if you don't like the result, and you can use a sponge to erase the design and use that same piece of paper all over again. And I like to take a few teaspoons of paste and put it in a smaller bowl, then add paint to my liking. If you don't like how the paint is mixing with the paste, well, then you have only used a few teaspoons.

Children love this activity, PSSSST, because it is really finger-painting with implements! Implements you can use to drag around the paint on the paper are plastic or metal combs, knives, fork, wadded up saran wrap blots, bottoms of candlestick holders, no item is safe from being uses as a paste paper 'brush'!

This one is a book cover of a soft-cover art journal I'd made.

 This one is the cover of a small, hard cover journal made to look like a Medieval ladies' prayer book

This one is the cover to an accordion book I'd made

This is the cover of a larger soft-cover art journal I had made a few years ago.

These two were ends I'd saved from cutting the larger piece for a project. They can become bookmarks (they laminate just fine) or as scraps to use in collages or decorative pieces on book covers or greeting cards.

We all have seeds of faith, and the Holy Spirit waters them

I wrote a fable a few years ago, before I was saved. I was raised in an atheist/lapsed Catholic home where church was not an activity we participated in. However, as a child, then as an adult, I always adhered to the internal feeling I had that there is immutable right and wrong, good and evil, black and white, truth and lies. I was forever getting yelled at. "Stop being so dogmatic!" I was told. "Everything is not black and white! There's gray!" I didn't buy it. Of course, the seed that He planted within me eventually blossomed into salvation. The one Truth is Jesus. There IS black and white. Hallelujah.

I went through some of my artwork from that period and I was struck by how biblical it is. The Spirit must have been working overtime in me. There are biblical allusions, biblical pictures, biblical concepts. I'll share one example, the fable titled "The Shark Tooth and the Rock." [click to enlarge]



















Once upon a time there was a shark. He swam the deep, dark waters endlessly, always hungry. He ate and ate, and preyed and preyed. He was always alone, occasionally cursing his lot of loneliness and predation. His fellow ocean dwellers swam away from him scared of his big teeth and his disturbing power. Eventually, the shark died. Soon the only thing left if this shark was its tooth. In the end, the tooth washed up on the shores of the cold ocean in which he swam. One day a little girl was walking the beach. She saw the darkly polished tooth, and picked it up. As she peeped at it in her palm, she wondered, "Was he happy being a shark?"














Once upon a time, there was a rock. He was a big rock, sturdy and strong. He lived through ages and ages and eons and epochs as a well-loved rock. As each age passed, he tumbled the warm waters of the ocean floor with his fellow rocks. Tumbling happily along, now and then he did good work like holding up buildings or making a beach. The eons of tumbling polished him to an even rounder and more pleasing proportion. As he tumbled down from his great size his inner gem-like qualities shone through and he sparkled. One day a little girl was walking the beach and she saw the splendor in this rock. She picked it up and held it warm in her hand. As she gazed at it in her palm, she marveled, "I love this rock."







"Free will means being able to choose the most loving way to be."




I leave it to you to determine the biblical allusions. For me it seems that in my little fable there is a predator endlessly going to and fro seeking whom he may devour; in the end he perished, the cover's 'city on a hill'; the stone's refinement by tumbling in the 'waters' until its inner qualities show; Light; and free will's goal, choosing Love.

All this to say, that the Holy Spirit has an amazing ministry on earth for each and every person on it. Saved or unsaved. What I was doing at that period in my life was create artist books and stories without limits and that allowed the Holy Spirit enough room to work in me. My soul knew that there existed an absolute: absolute truth, justice, right and wrong. My soul knew it. I would not let the world take that little seed of faith out of my hand. Finally, when the Spirit deemed the time was right, it grew. If you feel that things should be 'right' but they aren't, if you feel something is missing from your heart, or that things seem just a little empty and pointless, it is the Spirit talking to you. He is knocking at the door to your heart. He is the living waters that will grow that seed of faith. Will you let Him in?
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art notes: paste paper, suminagashi, artisan paper, artist books, real shark tooth scanned, real rock scanned then photoshopped with lens flare.