Oh No NaNoWriMo
Well, I finally had a quasi-epic fail in terms of putting together a crafty prop for a display. I had <a href=”http://rachelmoani.com/?p=193″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>this</a>, by the amazing <a href=”http://rachelmoani.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Rachel Moani</a>, as my inspiration. For awhile I’ve wanted to try my hand at making a big book like Moani’s, and the perfect excuse was <a href=”http://nanowrimo.org/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>NaNoWriMo</a>.
I opted to try a somewhat larger book rather than an friggin’ ‘uge tome. We don’t have a lot of storage, so my hope was to keep the book at a manageable size to store for various different displays. As you may have surmised, my book will not be stored, but we’ll get to that.
Honestly, I didn’t really measure, and I really should have measured. I was also out of glue so I tried using lots of tape. Lots and lots of duct tape. And other tape. Yep. Tape.
So, here it is – and yes, I strategically took the picture from a distance and at an angle (and yes I filtered it – STOP LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY. Ahem):
<img class=”alignnone wp-image-972″ title=”Not every display can be a winner. But I’m fine with "passable if you don’t look too closely."” src=”http://hafuboti.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/img_20131105_135235_750.jpg?w=584″ alt=”” width=”584″ height=”344″>
I do like my handwritten NA NO WRI MO, but really detest the cursive on the other side of the book. I think I should have either left it blank, taken the extra time to do a nice print, or written something fun like “once upon a time there was an author…” But what’s done is done, and at the point that I made that call, I was coming up on my self-imposed deadline of “this project is now taking more time than it should.”
The biggest change I made to the original inspiration (besides having it barely look like the inspiration) was to try and cover the botched-up underneath-the-top-layer bits, I accordion folded some paper that was the same height as the top page, and then taped it down.
To try and distract from the big book, and to fill out the table a bit more, I added our library’s rarely-used typewriter and typed out where to find out more about NaNoWriMo. If you look closely, you can also see some “artistically crumpled” paper to the left of the typewriter.
That’s about it! It’s not the worst display ever, and I definitely learned from my mistakes. I may hold off and practice some cardboard-wrangling on my own time to just get a better feel for the medium before I delve into such a complex cardboard piece again.
