I’m sure we’ve all done it at some point, bought something because it might come in handy, or because it’s too pretty to pass up (doesn’t matter that we’ve got nothing in our wardrobe that goes with it at this point in time). I tend not to do it with clothes, but I do it with craft supplies All. The. Time.
I’m a sucker for crafting materials of all sorts, but my major downfall is paper. I’m always buying pretty pieces of paper because I just can’t help myself, and when I’m in the art supply shop I usually leave with some colourful murano paper (which I use for lining covers) even though I’m sure I’ve already got some of the same colour back in my studio… and the trouble with the paper I buy is that it’s either 12 x 12 inches and needs to be stored flat, or it’s A1 or A2 in size and has to be stored rolled up as there’s nowhere else to put it. I end up with pizza boxes (clean ones, that’s what the suppliers send 12×12 paper in!) and rolls of paper all over the place.
Add to that lot all the offcuts of paper (and leather… and card…) that I’ve also got in various boxes, and that’s a LOT of stuff just sitting there.
Why don’t I just use stuff up as soon as it arrives? Various reasons, including not having enough time because my gardening work is going through a busy phase, but the main one is usually that I don’t have what I need to go with the item I’ve just bought. I might buy a paper which would work perfectly with, say, a fuchsia pink leather… but I don’t have any leather in that colour, and can’t afford to buy any at that point in time. So the paper gets stashed away, and often forgotten about for months. It’s a legitimate reason, but it’s not really an insurmountable problem so in line with my resolutions I’ve decided to make a dent in my current stash of paper.
My plan is a simple one: make book covers with them, even if I don’t turn the covers into actual notebooks for a while (covers are easier to store than huge sheets of paper). If I haven’t got everything I need, such as the right colour of leather, then I’ll get the paper onto the board covers and then store them like that until I do have the leather.
On Thursday I started work on this plan…
There you go. Three partially completed covers, just waiting to be joined together with leather spines (the backs of these covers have also been lined, so they really are almost finished). I did actually try and order some leather today, but they didn’t have the colours I wanted in stock – typical!
I did also manage to get some other covers finished properly, and in the process used up some suede which has been sitting around for over a year…
They look good (they actually look better in the flesh – the low light in my studio makes photography a nightmare!), and I’m feeling very virtuous for using stuff up. These covers can be stored more easily than the raw materials, and I can turn them into finished notebooks at my leisure. I’m going to keep ploughing through and hopefully turn most of my stash of paper into a stash of finished, or almost finished, covers.
Then I can start buying paper again…
