A Boatload of Coils

(a very small boat; not the point.)

Some days, you’ll just be sitting there, minding your own business, and you’ll get an idea.

This idea is probably small, in your head. So you start the idea, and get all into it, and by the time you look up, a week later, you have seventy coil-bound mixed-media journals sitting there, and you’re in dire need of a nap¹.

And maybe cookies.

Like so:

heaven help you if you have access to a binding machine because this is the result.

I couldn’t fit the all on the table. Really.

A fine sentiment for a guy sitting on an eyeball.

That stack’s like 20-ish high. I know.

AND YET MORE.

Dog for relative size. He was protecting me from a sus-looking squirrel who was ignoring him nefariously.

So that happened.

I meant to stop with the paper after the last batch of watercolor journals, but I had this giant box of paper scraps, and nowhere to put them. So I thought I wonder if I could cut them all to 4”x6” and just put them together.

I mean, I have a coil-binder². Can I use all of that together?

And the answer to that is yes. Yes, I can.

About the giant box of paper, btw:

A while ago, I went to a great big garage sale/fundraiser for a women’s cancer center. A whole town (Kalama, WA) got together and all donated a bunch of stuff and you would go around with a giant box, picking and choosing from this warehouse full of other people’s stuff, and make a single donation at the end.

I found a giant hoard of scrapbooking and papercrafting stuff. Some of it was damaged (because donations) and a whole garbage bag full of stuff was pretty obviously from Temu or Ali Express — like three hundred various 4x6 postcards and some small papers with imagery that I’m 99.7% sure are AI generated³. But good cause and all, and I brought it all home and subsequently just let it marinate in my closet while I decided what to do with it.

I also had this big ol’ package of stickers with phrases stolen directly from motivational posters that wanted to be used⁴.

Temu postcards + trite phrases to pump you up?

Sign me up for that.

And here we are.

On the plus side: I’ve used up a lot of stash.

Each book has a bunch of drawing paper, dyed/stained (intentionally) paper, maps, indes pages, book pages, printed papers, some sewn together hodgepodge scraps, old wallpaper — essentially, if it was flat and could be trimmed to size and coil bound, I put it in there.

As a result, some of my paper boxes that were full to overflowing are now empty and this makes me happier than I have words for⁵.

The downside: my wrists and hands feel like they’re being beaten to death by tiny, angry gnomes.

This is the fifth week in a row of doing a lot of fiddly, pinchy things with my fingers, and my hands are not here for it. They may have submitted an official complaint with the labor department for their mistreatment. I expect a hefty fine and a slap on the, uh, wrist.

So now, I’m actually going to rest.

I made lemon-blueberry loaf to celebrate. Because I deserve a cake⁶.

Ignore my dirty oven mitt. There was a run-in with some roasted vegetables last night. The oven mitt won, btw.

I’m also going to clean up the mess that five weeks of intense creation has caused. It’s…considerable.

What are y’all doing this weekend?

If you’re also resting, I have lemon-blueberry loaf to share. :)

1. Especially when you were supposed to be taking a rest week post-hyperfocus craziness.

2. I bought the coil binder a while back with the full intention of using it for a project I needed it for at the time. And now, I have zero clue what that project was supposed to be. I do know it was not for making seventy little journals, though.

3. Two things that I’m usually pretty much solidly against, for the record. Temu’s record of protecting or ignoring intellectual property theft means they won’t see a dime of my money directly. And you know how I feel about generative AI. But…good cause, and not supporting either with my dollars, so…grudgingly okay.

4. You’ll be glad to know that I did actually throw out the ones that said “LIVE LAUGH LOVE” on them, because even I am not enough of a stereotypical white girl to put more of that out into the world.

5. It also means that now I can feel guilt-free in buying more paper stuff. And the library book sale is tomorrow. I can feel my VISA beginning to quiver.

6. Cake should be a basic human right, btw. We all deserve cake.