A few weeks ago I had the idea of doing all of this year's dares in a soft cover moleskine journal. Pleased with the size and the idea I decided to use one for my trip to LA. Turns out it's not optimal for making minis. Looks cool in the end yes but it doesn't close well, doesn't allow for lumpy additions, doesn't hold up to changes (you know me and my "redo" habit) and it doesn't allow for any rearranging. But damn, no rings. I love that.
One of the things I did to help make it work was to strategically remove pages to help loosen up the spine. Every few pages or so I removed a page, carefully tearing it and it's mate in the back out. It helped a bit but as you can see, it's still really tight. The book does stand up beautifully on it's own though.
I added a few transparent pages throughout. This was done the lo-fi way by cutting the page to size and using a piece of scotch tape to hold it in. One half of the tape on the transparency, the other on the page beneath it. In a few places I'd planned ahead and was able to hide the tape beneath the photo but on others I just taped right atop the photo that was there. Screw it.
A few pages in I realized that the moleskin wasn't going to be able to hold all the photos I wanted to include so I had to come up with another plan. One was using the thumbnails either on top of other photos or in a large collage. Or batching the instax photos on the dividers. The other, was the transparencies. By cutting Jen, Vee and Tina out and pasting them onto the transparency, I was able to do what otherwise would have taken three more pages. On the flip side... I enlarged several of my favorite photos so that I could fill the spread with just one image, half on one side, half on the other. I couldn't be more pleased with how those turned out. They remind me of a glossy magazine.
The paper and stickers used throughout were all scored at CHA or scavenged during the trip, with the exception of one, the map in the front. The pages dividing the days are all backed with catalogs from Studio Calico that Jen and I not-so-surreptitiously stole from their booth. I ended up with three of each and still wish I had more. Seriously, even their catalogs are fabulous. Imagine how stoked we were when April gave us press kits filled with the real goods. So, so awesome. It was the surprise, and highlight, of CHA for me.
What else do I need to tell you? Quite a few of the photos in here were taken by someone else, either Jen, Vee or Tina. If I'm in it or it's especially good, assume they took it. Except the shot of the pool and the Santa Monica pier, those I did take. And the instax photos... I manned the Yeti for those.
You can check the whole thing out here.
