I’m very excited to announce my inclusion in a recently published book called 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse: Remake, Restyle, Recycle, Renew by Garth Johnson.

I don’t remember how I initially found out about this call for entries  (probably the Etsy forums) but, I remember scrambling to submit a couple of items, scrambling to get the release forms together, and not having much time to do it all. I think when I found out about it, the deadline was almost upon me.

And then I kind of forgot about it until I got an email from Garth earlier this month letting me know that at least one of my submissions had been accepted and the book would be published soon. Happy Dance time!

At the beginning of the year, I was drowning in a studio full of THINGS, STUFF, and all those bits and pieces that I just KNEW I could use someday. I was keeping almost everything. Mom needed matches once so she bought a ton of those little promotional boxes of matches from a flea market one weekend. I stole all the boxes and gave her the matches thinking I could make a book or something with them. I bought some high-dollar root beer (Virgil’s Root Beer) and could easily imagine a nice thick book with the Virgil’s box as the cover so I kept that. Coasters from restaurants I’d been to recently, a set of educational pictures on learning about weather from a garage sale, my mom’s cigarette boxes (books made from a cigarette box or made to fit in one), an antique school slate from the early 19th century….I was on a repurposing binge at the time. Although my work isn’t usually focused on environmentally conscious materials (I was using polymer clay for most of my work), I kept seeing books in everything, so I kept the materials in case I could figure out the time to actually work on these ideas.

One of the things I did get to were a series of paint chip notebooks. These were tiny little pamphlets that I made using some old paint chips I had in my studio from when we were thinking about repainting our room, painting the bathroom, and from when I did miniatures (paint chips are excellent for miniatures). I had quite a few of those strips with four colors on each strip so I cut them in half and folded them so there was one color on the front cover and a second color (tint or shade from the same strip) on the back cover. Did a quick pamphlet stitch using leftover paper from various books and other projects. And, voila! I had a tiny notebook.

Well, actually, I did quite a few of them at one time so I ended up with A LOT of tiny notebooks.

I had to get some more recently for a project I was working on so I’ll be making a few more of these. The originals sold out pretty quickly. I may keep these to send as little thank you gifts instead of selling them this time. Anyway, that was “one” of the items I submitted for the Creative Reuse book that was accepted.

The other item was a pretty cool mini book I made from a pair of leather gloves I found at a garage sale. They were lovely brown kid gloves in a size too small for a normal human to wear (ok, maybe there are some women with hands that small). The gloves were short gloves, right at the wrist, with a decorative strap and gold buckle on the back of each. I had to use both gloves to make one 3″ x 2″ book. I also used one of the straps and buckles to make a closure strap on the little journal.

Not only did this one make it in the book, but it’s on one of the pages that Amazon displays on their site. Maybe not quite as thrilling as having your item on the cover, but it’s cool enough for me. And I have two more pairs of gloves that I found at another garage sale…

I don’t have a copy of the book yet but you can bet I’ll be getting one soon. The other pieces I’ve seen included in the book look wonderful, so I’m definitely in good company and look forward to seeing it all in person.