An Evolving Idea...

Come Swap! xo

Tomorrow I’m hosting a writers’ mixer/social. This round, the mixer is also a book swap! Bring a book, find a book, trade, trade again if you’d like…and talk with people about books.

Did you know the word “orgy” has more than one meaning? Honest to god, I swear. One is the one you’re thinking of…most likely! :)

NOUN

a wild party characterized by excessive drinking and indiscriminate sexual activity:

"he had a reputation for drunken orgies" · "up to a dozen people at a time allegedly took part in the orgies"

The other is just a little different!

an instance of excessive indulgence in a specified activity…

We will have an orgy of books trading hands, of indulging in considering writers and writing….! Let’s do it!

I wanted to make a bookplate to commemorate the event, because it’s fun. My first run at it, I took a simple approach: clip art, text, printed via an artist on the site Zazzle.com…and I must’ve misread the dimensions, maybe the guy was using the metric system…because the prints ended up about the size of postage stamps.

So…I spent my hard-earned cash (honestly, it wasn’t much!) on….Holly Hobby book orgy stickers, in a dollhouse sizing….? :) Oof!

Not at all the result I’d hoped for…which made me realize I hadn’t given it enough thought. Often, you have to make that shitty first draft! I thought about why it didn’t work for me and drew out a new design.

Better, I’d say!

I upgraded the sketch of a book by taking a quick photo of a book…added text…

On some kind of path...Clumsy, though!

Tried again:

Then I ran it past my friend Jen, who is an actual designer….

Jen knows what she’s doing! It is so much better!

Voila! We have a bookplate! Swap books, and if you’d like, you can put one of these in the front. Someday, maybe Portland will be awash in traded books with Book Orgy stickers, in every free library and hotel lobby…one can always dream.

Hope to see some of you there!

M