Seven For The Books
The mouse's original main journal• is still missing. It was bothering me. I'm sure I put it somewhere safe and logical, but after searching too long, I just sat down with all the "mouse journal making" supplies and thought I'd make him another one. Made seven that day instead. So much fun to make; I could do just that for a living.
Finding small hair clips and sewing clips makes a better bite when holding thicker fabrics until the glue dries. This fabric was a snip off a vintage embroidered Japanese Obi. Sewn text blocks are held to dry with small binder clips.
Cut up small jewelry findings into locks and fancy corners.
Interiors on a few were actually finished, complete with pages made of real pressed leaves and flowers, highlighted with colored ink. These got attached to a thin mulberry paper from Japan as reinforcement for the delicate inclusions before being trimmed down into text blocks.
Even though small, the little journals were made how real handmade books are bound, complete with tiny braided headbands to cover the gaps between the text block and spine. I love how some spreads feature real leaves along with written memories. Squares of thin Birch bark were also used, as shown below left.
I found the finest point permanent ink pen I could and dared to try my hand at filling the finished journals with the mouse's handwriting. As there can be no specific language in Halfland, and not much writing at all, I was careful to keep the characters only gestural and not from any of the known 74 irl cultures that use a writing system.
It suggests an intuitive mixture of written scripts to me: Arabic, Thai, Tibetan, Coptic, Slavic, Japanese Hiragana, and ancient Byzantine.
* These are the only remaining shots of the original journal and quill from 2011, now gone missing.
Moving on!
UPDATE! I found this and all the other missing mouse journals on the floor behind a plastic tub of supplies on set. They must have fallen off the shelf above and remained too hidden to see.
But left with now a stack of them, the found and the new, what to do?
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