Indexing and memories

Workshops are reciprocal things.  Yes, you are being paid to share your knowledge, wisdom, skills etc; but you always, always learn.

During the lunch break at a recent workshop I mentioned I was trying to colour code my notebook entries to help keep track of a variety of projects that were underway.  I would write notes on one project, then start work on another, come back to the first a few pages down the track and add more notes, and colour coding was a  way for me to be able to see the different projects at a glance.

One of the participants said - I do bullet-journalling.

And so I learned a small part of this world - about indexing your work.  Light bulbs were me!

So simple - just number your pages and write down a heading and then note every page where that project appears. Seriously, how could I have missed this?

So of course, I immediately started to index my new notebook; then went back and did the one before that and before I knew it a few hours had been whiled away over a couple of days indexing my journals.

Brilliant to be able to access things; but the second thing of particular value was the reminiscing and being reminding of good ideas that went somewhere; sometimes went nowhere; but with fresh eyes could maybe go somewhere again.

Notebooks from 2013 - 2020 I think.

My next to most recent book, indexed. I need to probably do a few joinings up - where something started as one thing, then morphed in to another; but I can see at a glance what I did.  Most helpful when people ask me to re-do something for them; or one just like it...

One of the things I enjoyed most was seeing how much lettering play I used to do; and to realise how much I like it.  The letterpress has taken me way from hand lettering and these journals reminded me that is a rather lovely thing to do .

I kind of also like that little note to self - no idea what it referred to; but it has potential!

This sort of thing always makes me laugh - so typical.  I was doing feather ghost prints over some handwriting and clearly had forgotten to put the feather in once (or maybe twice).

Playing away with  the notion of cutting up prints and putting them back together.

Popping come collage bits into embossed markings - I love it yet it has never appeared in any finished work.  Might be time to play with this idea again.

Making up a hard to read lettering style - love these words.

(be brave with your life)

Experimenting with wax over old book pages and stitching rusty bits onto and into it. These ideas became a book, and the book sold!

This tiny strip of paper stuck along the margin of page was the foundation for the book Silence Helps No One. One glance at that paper play and I have the whole book in my head again; the intricacy of the binding and the difficulty of the messages held within.  This book was bought by the State Library of Queensland. Nice rememberings.

I am thrilled to have discovered a simple way of keeping track of my work which can be easily retro-fitted; and have loved the unanticipated bonus of rediscovering notes and ideas. Win-win.