"Out of the Darkness" Notebook

Last night, I spent a couple hours doing something I haven't done in over a year -- I collaged a notebook for myself. Although I won't be selling it in my shop, I wanted to share pics of it, because I love it sooooo much.

I'm hoping to go to a couple of NaNoWriMo write-ins this month, and I wanted something new and groovy to write in while I'm there. I watched The Princess Bride last weekend, and while I watched it, I remembered I had clipped an ad for the special edition dvd once. If I'm tossing a magazine, I go through it and cut out everything I think I might want to use in a collage someday. That way I don't have to keep a closetful of magazines around, but I don't lose cool pictures or words.

So I got out my clipped pictures and a fresh notebook and got started. I decided to make the words on the Princess Bride ad the theme for my collage, and found other movie couples to go with it, like Roux and Vianne from Chocolat, Paula and Charles from Random Harvest, Satine and Christian from Moulin Rouge!, and Rudolph Valentino by himself, just because he's Rudolph Valentino and I lurve him. And really, he's still a pretty major symbol of love, eighty-two years after his death.

I continued the theme on the back, with the quintessential movie lovers, Rick and Ilsa from Casablanca, taking center stage. I added Inman and Ada from Cold Mountain and Jane and Eddie from Someone Like You, and then I started searching for some words for the back. Words can make or break a collage, and I narrowed it down to four possibilities from my clippings before I finally decided on the phrase "Out of the Darkness." I like it because it works on lots of levels -- finding love can bring people out of their own personal darkness; movie images come at us out of the darkness of the movie theater; we create stories out of the dark nothing of our imaginations.

So there you have it, my new favorite notebook. Sorry I won't be offering it for sale, but if you really like it, you can contact me here or on my shop and we can discuss me collaging something similar for you. I can't wait to start using mine -- hopefully at the write-in tomorrow!

Oh, and if you're wondering what NaNoWriMo is, or what a write-in is, I'll explain quickly. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, a world-wide challenge to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. Write-ins are get-togethers for participants in specific areas to meet up in a public place and write together. For more info, visit my writing blog and NaNoWriMo.org.