Earth Day project

Today in honor of Earth Day I made this journal. Everything you see here was found in my studio as I was making it. I took a photo album I had purchased at the thrift store and took it apart. Then I went through my stash of papers and hand cut papers for pages to fit the book. Some of the pages are half a wide as the regular pages so they can unfold to give you a longer pieces of paper to work with. I was going to just throw away the photo pages but then thought- NO! I will incorporate them into the book and a person could use the pockets for photographs or ticket stubs or even a leaf they found while on a walk. The cover was white fabric  and  it  was very dirty. I painted it black and then used my gel medium ( I LOVE THAT STUFF!) to collage some oriental joss papers on the cover plus images of spring and earth. The entire book is held together by left over hemp from my son's obsessive hemp jewelry making phase. As I was looking through my stuff while making this journal I came across this quote - which is now in the bottom left hand corner of the front of the journal.

"All thinking worthy of the name now must be ecological" Lewis Mumford. Happy Earth Day!