The Palimpsest Process #4 The Journal Cover

We were meant to keep journals during the Personal Project for which I had made the piece about relationships. A friend who had done it the previous year, when she was in the 10th grade, had convinced me that the more dilapidated my journal seemed, the better my “Personal Engagement” grade would be. Somehow this naturally led me to make my own journal cover. I could have used any old notebook. I could have used a folder with pieces of paper. But I’d had the thought, and nothing to push against it. 

A couple of years prior, a family friend, another fellow arts and crafts enthusiast, had given me a Card Making Kit for my birthday. She had filled a folder with stationery, glitter glue, stickers, and a stack of little pieces of paper. There was paper with all kinds of textures, colours, and prints. She’d included everything from metallic corrugated sheets, and gorgeous handmade paper, to cut outs of vintage wrapping paper, and strips of card with flower shaped punch holes. It’s one of the most personal gifts I’ve received, and I loved it.

I managed to fill the cover of an old notebook with tiny pieces cut out from all the pieces of paper left in the kit, and some of my own collection - pieces of velvet paper, magazine cut outs, pastel sticky notes. I used tape to hold all the pieces in place, and then I decided to cover the whole thing in cling film, (also chaotically taped down) so that the tape wouldn’t be so evident. It had the unintended consequence of making this piece extremely easy to take apart, for which I’m grateful.

This piece has been a strange confluence of chaos and convenience. When I first made it, I wanted a journal that would feel well worn, it served that purpose quite well. It felt personal, and invested, and it felt like a good place to chaotically plan and scratch through ideas. As I’ve been speeding through this series so I can wrap up in time for poetry month, I knew I’d need a journal for that, and it’s a perfect fit.

I took apart the original cover - first the cling film, and then each tiny piece of paper. I sorted them by colour, and added a few elements - candy wrappers, copper leaf, packaging from the restaurant that has my comfort chicken soup, pages from an outdated coffee table book about Michael Jackson, and pieces of a phone screen that I took apart. This time, I used a brand new notebook, and this time I used Fevicol to actually fix the pieces down. Instead of just putting pieces of paper down haphazardly, I arranged them by colour, more like a collage.

I think I did a better job this time of allowing each piece of paper (or paper-like material) to be appreciated. There are only a few pieces that visibly overlap or cover other pieces, and there isn’t a clumsy cling film wrapping maring the whole thing.. You can touch each piece, see where it starts and ends, and there is a sense of planning, thoughtfulness even, to the larger arrangement. It’s vibrant, and busy, but doesn’t feel quite so chaotic or messy.

I’m glad to give these scraps of material new life, and I’m so excited for poetry month!