Around the World garlands

I am making an order of Around the World Garlands today and I thought I would show you what goes into them. They are made up of two different books, an atlas and an encyclopaedia.

Out of one of my piles of kids books I choose an old encyclopaedia/fact book. This is only one pile of my collection, they are beginning to grow on the floor and in cupboards...but I can't help myself!

 It must have those glorious old water colour illustrations in it. I only cut double sided pictures out, no text for this garland, and the paper must be thick. I don't know how I made all of these rules, but they have stuck and so I must follow them. This book is the Animals of Tundras and Icelands.

99% of the time I use only Junior Jacaranda Atlas's, the kind we had at school. Rules for these,are that they must be old and must have that lovely thick cardboardy paper. However, I found this brilliant Moden Commonweatlth Atlas which features a beautiful blue sea. I can't wait to use it , but also like fabric, I am always very scared to cut anything so beautiful.

Once they are handcut and sewn they end up as garlands whose function I guess, is to adorn. But, also for me, making these is working on those childhood memories, when computers did not exist, when you would lift the lid of your desk at school and gaze at an atlas and imagine all the places in the world. The only place they were visualised were in books like these childrens encyclopaedias (and the big adult ones, but they aren't as pretty)

Maybe I was a loser geek, sitting in a library corner, imagining the world and its adventures, but it was really all we had. I still love these books and get a thrill out of looking through them. Ho-hum...still the loser geek!