A personal project to mend a broken heart
Honouring special memories has brought joy to my New Year!
This month Illoguild members are writing about their personal projects and it’s timely for me because in December I created something truly magical for a loved one, which has inspired me to go on and build a creative archive.
It took countless hours within a 2 week time frame, but I finally completed a 100 page scrapbook on Christmas Eve, which contained all the stories of my Grandmother’s life; handwritten notes and poems and art by me.
I can show you the front of it, but the interior is now the property of my Dad. It was a labour of love; cathartic and emotional in equal doses. I made repeat patterns; took gelliplate monoprints of ferns from her garden; melted wax seals over hand drawn portraits and hid words behind paper flaps. Even more special to me, I found some handwritten notes in my Grandmother’s kitchen whilst we were preparing it for sale, which were 40 years old or more - she would leave a note on the kitchen table letting us know her whereabouts so we could decide whether to wait. Sometimes she had gone to the local village or art class and sometimes it said ‘In the shed’!!
The cherry on my cake was coming across art work which I made for my Grandmother at only 8 years old - it was a Christmas tree surrounded by flying angels - and to this day I can clearly recall her delight in the finished piece and encouraging me to sign and date my work. I’m not out of the grieving process yet, but every act of kindness towards the home she cherished for 70 years gets us closer to releasing it to another lucky family who will feel the love in the walls.
It surprised me that once I had finished snipping and gluing, my fingers were itchy for more. It was already on my list to attempt Story Storm - an annual prompt by Tara Lazar to create 31 ideas for stories during the month of January. Could I combine my current art work with new stories or at the minimum, use them as jumping off points for picture book content?
2025 feels like the perfect time to amalgamate all my favourite illustrative characters and environments from the past few years into one hard copy sketchbook. Ideally I plan to take this book with me to Bologna for the Children’s book fair. In her podcast with Studiomate Steve, Juls Patton talks about her A to Z book of ideas, which she shows to publishers each year. I had the absolute pleasure to meet Julia at a Christmas event and she showed me her current book (I could have fainted with excitement) and she encouraged me to bring my sketchbook and pens with me everywhere to collect ideas.
It is half way through January as I type this and I have successfully filled every letter of the alphabet with at least one strong image from my chaotic filing system (that should be an improvement for another day) and therefore 14 days left to sit with my visuals and let the imagination creep in. Four of the letters are already reserved for existing stories which already have a strong concept or story line. There are also plenty of blank pages for new sketchy sketches.
I don’t know why I didn’t attempt this before? The tactile nature of a physical book with a textile cover and heavy pages - it’s a joy. I’ve cut pages out of existing sketchbooks; photocopied and reduced large pieces; included paper engineering pop ups; maybe there is even room for wax seals and hidden poems. Whatever ends up in there, the longest month of the year is already half way through and I need to get to work!
Have you completed a personal project that has kicked off an unexpected growth spurt?
Stay creative!
xx Tabsy xx