A Book For My Late Mom

          This book is VERY special and important to me. My idea started out with a way to remember my late mother who committed suicide when I was fourteen years old. I was actually going to write a ghost story, which, looking back, would've been a little silly. But my idea stemmed into just pieces of a poem. I wanted to positively remember her and I had just so much to say. After many rough drafts, I had what I have printed into this book. Constructively, this is a pocket accordion book, so every page on the inside has a pocket.

            In nine of the eleven pockets sits a picture of my mother. My family has taken so many pictures over the years that it wasn't difficult to find a bunch of pictures with one similarity. I wanted whatever book this would be, to be readable and enjoyable for even people that didn't know my mom. So in every picture, my mom's face is not visible. There was no Photoshop or anything needed to make that happen. I simply found beautiful photos of my mom in which her face was covered by a hand, or a shadow...just basically not made out. And in the poem that spans the nine pages of this book, I describe how beautiful my mother was. I find ways for the reader to imagine her face and beauty without judgment, because only then is a stranger able to identify with how I view my mom.

         It was hard for me to think of a simple way to get words printed on the size of paper I used, so I decided to just glue it on somehow. I used photo paper for the words because ironically the pictures weren't coming out great on photo paper. All of the pictures in the book are printed on regular copy paper, then double-side taped on a thicker paper that is hard to bend. I did this to give the viewer the feel of an actual photograph. The pictures are removable because they're in pockets. The background paper all comes from a beautiful Everyday Snapshots series of 12x12inch paper. For the most part, every book has a different background that you can mostly only see if you remove the pictures.

                  To date, I have completed only 33 of these books. There really is a lot that goes into making one. Every book has a long piece of purple satin ribbon that is wrapped around it to keep it from going back to it's accordion shape. Every book has a different bead that keeps it closed. The idea for this book and the handmade cover that I constructed from a special hard paper is taken from the book "Making Handmade Books", by Alisa Golden. I really love how I made this come together.