shuffle minibook

Whenever I feel like making something, but don't know what, I make a shuffle project. I've been doing them for years; it all started several years ago on my homepage, where I made html pages for different songs. Then blogging came and killed all the personal homepages, and so I moved on to paper and glue instead.



A shuffle project is, as you may have guessed, based on the shuffle function of whatever you play your music with (iTunes and my iPod, for me). I just put it on shuffle and do something (a page or collage, mostly, but they can be drawings, paintings, photographs, anything you could think of)) based on the song that comes up next. And then the music keeps on playing, and when you have finished that page - no matter if you have heard five or twenty songs since you started - the next page will be about the next song you hear. (There is always the possibility of not using a song if you don't feel like it. I wouldn't want to force myself to use a song if I don't like it.) And then I keep going like that until I'm done, or more likely, until I should be going to bed.



One of the things I like about it is that I get a theme, a starter, something to get me going, but from there I can do whatever I want. I can think of so many variations on the theme! Colors, materials, photos, no photos, drawings, anything.



This one (see the images larger on my flickr page is a minibook that I wanted as cheerful as possible. It is quite unusual for me to use colors as bright as these - I'm more into plain yellow, red and blue when I use bright colors, and not so much magenta and turqoise. But it was fun nevertheless. Anything that will widen your perspective and make you try something you haven't tried before is a good thing. I used only photos that I had already printed - I have a leftover box for them - so they are from completely random occasions, but that is part of the fun. For me they still match the song I was working with, and that is the point (this time. It doesn't have to be).




I made this minibook a little while ago, and now, as I write this, I already feel like making another. A jazz themed one perhaps?