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| Lines done with Sharpie oil marker; numbers with colored pencil. |
Once my working art journal starts to get mostly full, it drives me nuts to flip back-and-forth; back-and-forth; and back-and-forth AGAIN looking for a particular page. It's in the middle of that frustration that I finally sit down and create a Table of Contents (for which I've saved the inside front cover OR the inside back cover) so that it makes finding pages MUCH EASIER. It also then identifies how many pages are still in a point of flux; either completely empty or only partially completed.
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| White gesso with 3 shades of fluorescent tempura paint. |
To begin, put a post-it note on each double-page-spread with a sequential number. I must confess that every time I make such a Table of Contents I initially goof up and skip a page (here-and-there) which I inevitably discover after I've already configured the Table of Contents to a particular predetermined total number of pages. In this example, I had counted and created a table for 48 pages. And yes, I discovered mid-way through that I'd skipped TWO pages for a total count of 50. You'd think I'd learn because this is a consistent error for me; but no! No matter how careful I think I am being about counting and labeling the page numbers in the journal, inevitably more pages magically appear. Another caution is that as you come to empty pages that you are not ready to title, it is super easy to not skip in the index and write (for example) the title for page four in the page three (empty) spot. To avoid this error, put a post-it not on the pages without titles/not yet complete so you don't inadvertently put the "next" page title in the wrong spot. This post-it note plan also makes it easy to identify the pages in progress. In this example, I was surprised to discover that I still have a total of 20 pages either completely blank or in progress. My journal isn't nearly as "done" as I had otherwise thought it was.
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| I had to squeeze in two more pages (49 and 50) as my original page count was off by two. |
