Whiter and Brighter

I know I've been saying for a while that I want to put some new, different kinds of things into the ExpeditionD shop.

I'm thinking of it as a provisions store, the kind of place you go to for miscellaneous things. Like a general store. When I gave the Etsy shop the name "ExpeditionD" I was thinking of travel, archeology and excitement. Caravans in the desert, boats down the nile.

So this little spiral bound handmade book is the first of the new things I'm adding.

I love books and paper; I love to keep a travel journal when I go somewhere, and I keep all my little knick-knacks (tickets, little things from hotels and Bed and Breakfast places, Menus, matchbooks, all that stuff) glued into a travel book that I keep. Then later I can add drawings, photographs, anything like that.

I also like to make recipe books to give to people when they say they like something I cooked.


So this is sixteen pages of mixed things, with a pretty design and an oversized woodcut skeleton key on the front.

Some pages are heavy cardboard with pretty wallpaper designs on them, they're great for glueing things down with a glue stick.

There is cold pressed watercolor paper, for drawing with a pencil or doing a watercolor wash. I do that sometimes when I travel and finish the drawing later.


And pages of my own deckle cut handmade paper. Yes, I love to make handmade paper...

I saved a bunch of junk mail, envelopes and things like that, ground it up in the paper shredder and one warm day I made sheets of handmade paper out of it. The ultimate in recycling, when you look at the paper you can sometimes see the letters from the paper showing through. Fun!

I don't know if people will like these little books and some of the new things I plan to put in ExpeditionD. But I'll always have jewelry in the other shop. I just can't stop myself from working in lots of media.


I made the spiral binding myself - I wasn't sure how it would work but it's just great, it folds completely back on itself to lay flat, that's useful when drawing.

If you would like me to make one for you with just watercolor paper in it for a journal, let me know! Or something with a theme - I will be adding more things later, I just couldn't wait to share this one with you.