The (Gigantic) Little Black Book

I'm still at Penland and I just have to share the collaborative book we've been making. At the end of every session, there's a really fun auction to raise money for scholarship programs. Our class has been working on a book for the auction called The Little Black Book. And yes, it's full of names and phone numbers (some of them our real names and phone numbers!) The process of making the book was interesting and shows how we generally worked in Laura Wait's class. So here it is from the beginning:

First we all wrote and painted on both sides of the sheets of paper in different areas.

Then Laura started cutting them down and we added more detail including  handwritten phone numbers and stories.

Then Laura cut, folded, and sorted them into book pages. Originally she planned to make two books, but the giant stack of pages looked really good together, so it became one fat book.

Here it is on the sewing frame- it's 2 3/4 inches tall!

At this point we all went back in and wrote our real names and phone numbers mixed in with the fake ones we wrote originally. Here's Clara Boza jotting down her own "good time" phone number.

And here it is done. 

Since this is a serious work of art, my class member Laura Martin wrote an artist statement for us.

Here is Ria who was very happy to win The Little Black Book at the auction.

There was one important ingredient in making this book that you might not have picked up on in the above photos. Here it is:

Laughter!!