I glue - do you?

i'm talking about glue therapy

yes

glue

back when i was a kid

i'd take the elmers, or modpodge or even the dreaded

scotch tape

and glue things down

my sister and i decorated lots o'shoeboxes in our time with things we clipped out of magazines.

lots of words

not - explore, dream or discover - mind you (3 words on my hit list - along with journey - i've removed awesome from my hit list - have you noticed its not said as much anymore by everyone much to my total delite?... digressing....)

but something akin to that i guess - in that we found words (pictures too) and cut'em out and glued them down - thus giving them more importance then they were originally intended by webster.

ANYWHO yesterday i was in a little bit of a funk - not depressed - and found i needed a little

glue therapy

i didnt realize it really until i was in full therapy mode.

Yes

I'll explain

I have this notebook - your basic black & white hard cover composition book - i've been using to paste my small smackerels into. My bits and pieces.

I have forever clipped things out of newspapers and magazines (see above... since childhood) because i like them. An image or an interesting story, a comic, ann landers/dear abby column... you get the idea. For many years I stuck them to my refrigerator - not all of them - important ones. The others would pile up and i'd move them from place to place. When i'd go into my crazy cleanup mode much of my clippings would end up in the trash - i just couldnt keep them all, no refrigerator was large enough and perhaps i really didnt need it at all. I kept only theeee most important bits and pieces. (smellapackrat? yup) When i was a kid i did paste some things to shoeboxes. I've been known to cover cigar boxes with them too. But over the years this has become unsatisfactory to say the least.

Finally, i had an idea. I had the aforementioned notebook around - so i started glueing things into it. Voila. Now i had one place for my smackerels - nice and tidyish - in a book. when one book gets full i can always fill another and so on. I should note here that i also glue things into my sketchbooks but i didnt want to fill up my sketchbooks (with paper thats meant for lovely drawings, etc ) with these tidbits. that'd be crazy right? (i know, i'm already there) I hate to waste good drawing paper - but composition notebook paper - no problem.

so yesterday i had out my composition book looking through it and decided wouldnt it be nice to cover it with some origami paper i had laying around. In comes the glue therapy. You were wondering weren't you? Ah. I started glueing the scraps of paper down on that cover - and i just don't know how to explain it - but it has a most calming effect on me. I wasnt trying to make a pretty covered book mind you - the result looks more like some kind of crazy quilt. I didnt even use scissors to cut the pieces. i just started laying them down and brushing on the modpodge and it was really quite relaxing. Almost as good as getting into that zone when i'm drawing. Best of all i wasn't trying to make anything pretty - its really kind of a pretty mess - but not something i do if that makes sense. Anyway i guess i'm saying if you need a little time to think things out and you're not sure what to do - try a little glue therapy. there are no rules of course - actually if you try to make something look good whilst you're glueing - you're not doing it right :-)