These days my life has been leaning heavily towards poetry and I've barely been in contact with paper. I'm beginning to miss it big time, but it'll still have to wait. My home will be taken over by men with loud tools, and I'm running away to a writers' residency in beautiful Visby, Sweden, where my main goal is to sleep after months and months of poor rest amidst a construction work soundscape.
So, very unsurprisingly, just like last time, I thought I wouldn't be able to finish an artists' book for the #areyoubookenough bookbinding community challenge, but I somehow made it happen anyway. The August theme was Listen. I had big plans about a hissing and rumbling Jacob's ladder, that, out of necessity, had to turn into much tinier plans - the kind you can actually whip up in one evening the day before deadline. That's fine - my main focus with these monthly challenge books is simply to explore new things and have fun while at it, so I made my very first volvelle, Find your inner voice! My own inner voice seems to change from moment to moment, from day to day (of course there's a baseline), so I thought it would be fun to find some way to put it into words. This volvelle can produce 576 different word combinations to describe your inner voice (correct my math if I'm wrong) - which one is yours today?
I think I'm going with a muffled hum myself. Even my inner voice is wearing ear plugs.
The volvelle measures 12,7 cm / 5" in diameter and it's made out of 300 gsm watercolour paper. You can find a video of the volvelle in action on my Instagram account.
I'll most likely have to sit the next one out as I'm separated from my supplies and my tools by a decent-sized strip of sea. I hope other things come into being while I'm away. The next theme for the challenge hasn't actually been announced yet, but follow the hashtag #areyoubookenough for information and neverending inspiration should you want to join in!