The Maroon Diaries

My mum loved the bunting I made from children's book pages, and she asked me to make her some cards with pieces of similar pages. I didn't want to buy new cardboard and matching envelopes to make a set, though, that would be going against my buy-(almost) nothing-new guidelines. But then I found a set of ten matching cards, new and unopened, in an op shop. They had pictures on the front and logos on the back, but the insides are blank. So, this is what I came up with. I covered the logos on the back with some scraps of book pages or wrapping paper. Each card has its own matching square envelope, with the postcard squares and everything. Schmick. And there we go, that's a project finished that I started years ago and have been meaning to get around to finishing one day for all the time in between. Satisfaction feels! 

I've been a stationery addict since I was just a little kid. I remember the first time I felt that thrilling rush that girls can get while shopping, the one that the whole consumerism movement depends upon exploiting. I was seven years old and in a newsagency/bookshop, surrounded by books and notepads, pens, pencils, rulers and rubber erasers in such an astounding variety of shapes and styles that I marvelled that anyone could come up with the idea to make all these things into colourful little rubbers. Shining accessories were lined up in neat categories, each item defined by its little perspex slot. I can remember the absolutely rapt fascination with which I regarded my first-ever start-of-school-year supplies, aged four. I don't remember ever feeling so deeply about any toys or dolls. It was books, and paper and scissors, and tape and glue and suchlike, that inspired my early explorations of the properties of the physical world. I can still become overwhelmed by such fe...