"Wreck This Journal"
by Keri Smith at Amazon
No, REALLY Wreck It!
By Chris Dunmire, Journal Wreck-a-teer
Raise your hand if you're timid about marking up your books. I am. Well, occasionally I'll get bold and highlight some lines or a key paragraph, but I'm not a notes-in-the-margin kind of gal... I've been conditioned *not* to wreck my pretty clean-paged books from years of disapproving parental "don't-write-in-it" looks and the decentive of small reimbursements from college textbook bookies should my book be over used. Besides, WHAT IF SOMEONE ELSE READS WHAT I WRITE? Oh, the irony of being a journaler!
Well, journaling is another matter, isn't it? I mean, it's got that built-in mark-up intention and always has the possibility of being found and read by some snooper*. It's a journal. That's what journals do. And that's why some diaries have paltry keys and the rest of us just said "what the heck!" and took up writing in public blogs.
However, for those of you who buy pretty/expensive/very clean journals only to go on to be CREATIVELY BLOCKED in using them, this might interest you:
Last week I found the coolest little concept book by Illustrator Keri Smith (KeriSmith.com) on the shelf at Barnes & Noble titled "Wreck This Journal." Its pages are made to be destroyed. I swear, I saw one that prompted, "Rub dirt on this page."
Read more about it on Keri's Web blog and be sure to take notice of the Random Exercise Generator on the right-hand side of the page. It will have you do fun stuff journal-wise even if you don't get the book.
In fact, Keri's got a whole slew of fun books published like this one: The Guerilla Art Kit, Tear This Book Up, Living Out Loud, and How to Be an Explorer of the World. Fun! Which leads me to wonder, do libraries dare stock books like this for patrons? •
* I wholly credit my learnings of the concept snooping to those episodes of Brady Bunch where someone was looking for something they shouldn't have been. Alice, Carol, and Cindy, yes you! Okay, that was me up at 2:AM last night with TVLand!
© 2009 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com. All rights reserved. |
