The February 2022 word from the Are You Book Enough challenge was “Lines”. At first glance I thought, well this is going to be easy enough – the project will be a collection of lines: straight lines, squiggly lines, intersecting lines, parallel lines, etc., etc., etc. But then I thought, “No, everybody will do that – so, think again!”
The Evolution of Lines
As I started to ponder more about types of lines, it struck me that lines are not necessarily geometrical. There are all kinds of lines! With a little bit of internet research, I quickly made a very long list of lines:
- frost line
- dotted line
- bottom line
- toe the line
- picket line
- zip line
- assembly line
- out of line
- fine line
- tag line
- base line
- line in the sand
- neckline
- plumb line
- party line
- a chorus line
And this was only the start… there were oodles more! Line of fire; hook, line & sinker; life line; fence line; timeline – the list went on and on!
It was clear I now had my line concept, but what would be the approach?
The Execution of Lines
When I embarked on the year of AYBE, I had made a personal promise that all of my projects would be: (1) book structures – predominantly structures that I had never done before; and/or (2) pop-up heavy. In other words, I wanted 2022 to be the year where I would devote a lot of time to paper engineering.
To me, all of the “line” words and phrases I had assembled seemed to scream kinetic. This was definitely going to be a pop-up book! So, I went through the very long list and generated a short list of lines where I thought I was capable of creating suitable pop-up vignettes:
- bee line
- foul line
- tree line
- draw a line
- fishing line
- punch line
- trend line
- blurred lines
- clothes line
- finish line
- florida georgia line
- end of the line
The Elements of Pop-Up by David A. Carter and James Diaz was a huge help in the execution of this project. I went through this “encyclopedia” and imagined each structure – how it might be interpreted for each type of line. I wanted my lines to twirl, or pop, or slide!
The tag line for the book is: A pop-up book for aspiring paper engineers and I couldn’t agree more. It was so helpful – an invaluable resource to this pop-up newbie.
From concept to completion, it pretty much took the entire month of February to create this book. I chose a lovely aqua-blue lokta paper for the cover material, and generated a title label that was intentionally misleading – I wanted the reader to think that this book would be filled with geometric lines. <Yawn> Upon opening the book, they would be in for a great surprise. This was not some predictable treatise on basic lines. Instead, it is a light-hearted look at other types of lines… and a pop-up to boot! Smiles abound!!
February’s Food for Thought
I do like to include a good quote with my blogs:
“The world keeps turning, turning. There are no straight lines but those of lineage, and on maps and spider’s webs.”
~ We That Are Young by Preti Taneja
Barb
