Happy with how this turned out, even without taking the class. I may have missed some detail, and no doubt it would be nicer with larger tags, but yeah, I enjoyed the making process, and it was better than sitting in front of the computer with my thumping headache.
I began where I left off, after a bit of a tidy up:

I was addressing the little tiny elements that slip into the pleated tags, adding some word stickers to each one. Here are the pages:







And the little elements from the pockets (each one is two-sided):










Thoughts: all the elements make use of the most rubbish scraps. Just all kinds of bits from other projects, the kind of thing you normally would throw away. My challenge to myself was if I pick it up, I must strive to use it in the best way possible and to do that, working on multiple elements at the same time was a must. Also, I really love using the surrounds – so if I punched a heart, using the leftover outline became a kind of go-to element, and ditto with circles. I had a sheet of quotes I wanted to use, and getting them all to hang together in a coherent (kinda) way was also a challenge. I thought it might be helpful to see it written out as text:
- My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness (Virginia Woolf)
- Life can be grating. (all the rest is Charles Butkowski)
- The tigers have found me and I do not care.
- We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain like roses that never bothered to bloom
- Some people never go crazy.
- Having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.
- We must bring our own light to the darkness
- I want so much that is not here.
- Forget my brother, I am my own keeper.
- What matters most is how well we walk through the fire
- and to and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us
Some artistic license taken, occasional words omitted or added to make the quotes hand together a little better. The added single words might make little sense to anyone but me, but they link to my thoughts as I created the project.
I’d maybe do another at some point and maybe try to refine the structure a little – adding the pleated tags so they don’t all fall in the same place on the spine would keep the book a bit flatter but as my tags a small (2 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches rather than the 5 1/8 x 10 1/2 inches of the original ones!) I feel like I did pretty well with about half the surface area LOL! I would consider cutting tags from heavy cardstock if I did.
I love using up scraps and making something from them. And these scraps called to mind the specific projects I used them on, so that was a nice throwback.
I have another medical thing next week so posts might be a bit thin on the ground after Monday. Fair warning….