Do not be hasty, that’s my motto. –Treebeard, The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
Do you ever have a sudden vision of an enticing project and find that you can’t turn your back on it? A project that you don’t have time for but you can’t resist doing anyway? It happens to me all the time and my excitement can cause me to rush. In the case of my party book, my haste to prepare the pages led to an interesting flaw that I decided to make into a feature.
The idea came to me moments before the creativity retreat I organized to celebrate turning 40. I wanted a memento of the event and decided to have those at the party contribute to an accordion book. I was learning to make books by hand at the time, so I added watercolor paper and some collage materials to my other supplies. How hard could it be?
When I arrived at the retreat site, I started frantically cutting and folding pages so they would be ready for my guests. I made folded double-page spreads with tabs for gluing the pages together after they were done. This way, everyone could work on the project simultaneously.
The collages I got back were fabulous. Even though some of my friends were anxious about “what to do”, everyone found something they could put on their pages. I was thrilled with the results and had the added pleasure of owning artwork by my talented friends.
This being me, it was two years later before I got around to assembling the book. As I began to glue the pages together, I realized something was wrong. Of course, I didn’t stop gluing because I was in a hurry to see the finished product. I had the complete text block assembled before I paused to figure out what had happened. Instead of a rectangular text block, I had a stack of pages that resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Viewed from the top, my pages made a trapezoid, not a rectangle. Fortunately, I was amused by this result.
Along with being hasty, I am often lazy. I saw that in each section the first page was longer than the second and realized my hurried measuring had been inaccurate. However, I wasn’t about to take the pages apart and try to fix things. I decided instead to make it look like my funky text block was intentional. My solution? Fill the empty space along the spine with “danglies” using all sorts of odds and ends. The result was a book that says “Party!” in no uncertain terms.
What mistakes have cropped up in your projects? How do you deal with unexpected results? Are you in a hurry like me, finding ways to turn your flaws into features? Or do you prefer to undo things and fix the problem?
Next week, I’ll post instructions for making your own accordion book (the right way AND the hasty way) plus tips for holding your own creativity party.
