Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Junk or Treasure?

I wanted to make birthday cards using a story page as background and including a corner bookmark. I thought this would be apropos since I generally give books as presents. I dug through my stash, to find a book junky enough to repurpose and found this...

Famous Fairy Tales (c) 1971
by Western Publishing Company

...an old gem from my childhood, Famous Fairy Tales. It has been duct taped, inside and out, and yet is still missing the first forty-two pages with these classics: Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Jack the Giant Killer. Why keep this thing? Why not give it a new life by recycling it into cards to share with my friends?

 
First Page, 43

So I drug it down to my basement studio and flipped through the chapters...perfect! But I can't seem to make myself tear the pages out! This book has been kicking around since I was a little kid. It's been read and loved in Montana, stored in a box in Alabama, moved back across the country to Oregon, and now is seeing the light of day in Washington.

Where else can you find a book with crusty, forty-five year-old duct tape, hot chocolate stains, and an advertisement for a free can of Folger's Coffee? When I flip through the pages, the book automatically falls open to Tom Thumb on my favorite page, sixty-four. I love that picture of Tom taking a bath in a tea cup. So tiny, so cute!

Guess I'll keep it a while longer.

Tom Thumb

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." ~ Thomas A. Edison

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