The Art of Memory Collecting

 
 
The Art of Memory Collecting
15 Scrapbook, Collage, Trinket, and Zine Projects for Crafting Treasured Moments
by Martina Calvi

photos by Petrina Tinslay

Quadrille

2024

 

 

The Art of Memory Collecting is a craft book with advice for contemporary scrapbookers and other mementos, emphasizing collage and ephemera. Martina Calvi has a second book about 'junk journaling', and I feel like you can see her advice here already leading in that direction. I would contrast this way of documenting memory with an earlier style of scrapbooking that was mostly about displaying photographs and writing meaningful captions, although Calvi herself never makes this comparison.
 
Calvi given advice for journals, a few kinds of boxes (including time capsules), a few kinds of personal zines, and a few kinds of greeting cards (including advice for making letter-art pen pals). Because several of these projects are quite similar, just at different sizes or with different themes, Calvi has a couple chances each to teach the crafting techniques involved. Her broader vision of how to make any of these projects, however, remains consistent throughout. The projects in The Art of Memory Collecting are ultimately quite similar to the mail art in Good Mail Day.
 
Save any trinkets, scraps of paper, physical photos, or other odds and ends, especially (but not only) ones that have some sentimental value or look cool. Set them out along with any stamps, stickers, fabrics, prints, or washi tape you want to use. Pick a subset that go together based on person, place, event, or even just color. Try arranging them until you find a layout that pleases you, then cut, glue, layer, and embellish until whatever you're collaging is completely covered and your star objects are displayed to good effect.
 
In general, I think Calvi does a decent job steering her instructions between the two shores of 'simple enough to understand' and 'technical enough to be useful' without running aground on either side. I would've enjoyed a few more example photos of finished projects. And I think Calvi assumes her reader pretty much already has a collection of things to scrapbook with. She spends a little time giving examples of the kinds of things you might collect, and more to discussing how to choose from among your collection for a given project, but that's an area I might've liked a bit more advice.
 
Calvi mostly assumes her reader already wants to do these projects and already sees them as worth doing, but I found myself thinking about how I would justify them. My defense would be twofold. First, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. If you are only willing to scrapbook when you can do everything right, you'll hardly ever do it at all. A finished page that's messy or ugly is still better than a blank page, or a perfect page that only exists in your head. Second, objects tell a story. They provide context and trigger memories. Whatever scraps of paper you've acquired recently tell the story of your life right now, even if they seem insignificant in themselves. You can make a perfectly curated page for an important occasion another day. For now, right now, use whatever you have on hand to commemorate your ordinary life at this moment.
 
Calvi and photographer Petrina Tinslay also deserve credit for how good all the photos look. I'm not really sure about the division of labor here. Calvi got a book deal because she has a popular Instagram, and I sort of assume she usually takes her own photos. And photographers usually set up their own shots, so I don't know if Calvi just provided the projects and materials to shoot, or if she helped pose them at all. Anyway, however they did it, the result is a book full of photos with almost supernaturally good composition. My personal shorthand for this look is 'Wes Anderson style', but what I mean is bright cheerful colors, eclectic mixes of materials, things arranged neatly with consistent spacing between objects, the use of negative space as a frame. The photos in a book like this are obviously supposed to look good, but these photos look really really good. 

Aperitif

 

Aperitif

Cocktail Hour the French Way

by Rebekah Peppler
photos by Joann Pai
Clarkson Potter
2018
 

  

Aperitif is an invitation to enjoy a French style happy hour, an apero, with friends. For author Rebekah Peppler, an American who lived in Paris for awhile in her 20s and 30s, this means drinks made with sherry, vermouth, and other fortified wines, and savory snacks to accompany them before dinner. 

 

Peppler starts of with an introduction to vermouth (plus its cousin quinquina), sherry, and a few recommended liqueurs like Suze, St Germain, and creme de cassis. Most of the ingredients she uses are bittersweet, which definitely gives the drinks she builds from them a consistent palate. 

 

Vermouth is made from wine that's fortified with a spirit like brandy, then infused with herbs, including wormwood, from which it draws its name. Quinquina is very similar, except the bittering agent is quinine instead of wormwood. Sherry starts similarly but gets its flavor from aging in oak barrels rather than infusing herbs. Peppler picks a few brands to mention by name - Byrrh, Dubonnet, and Lillet - but largely treats the various vermouths and quinquinas as interchangeable aside from grouping them as rouge, blanc, and rose, which is honestly what I do at home too.

 

Next there are four sections of drink recipes, grouped by the weather at the time you're drinking them - warm, hot, cool, and cold. Peppler says this is partly seasonal, partly based on time of day, and whether it's been rainy or sunny. The drinks are all relatively low alcohol, what Dinah Sanders calls 'shims'. Because of Peppler's limited ingredient list, and because many of her ingredients are categories with several options for how to fill it, a lot of the recipes seem like flexible templates. Others are oddly specific. There's a Kir drink in each season, for example, always with the exact same ratio, just changing the mixer, always blackcurrant liqueur (cassis), just with sparkling wine, lager, cider, or red wine.

 

There's also a section with recipes for snacks, various puff pastries, crackers, and seasoned popcorns you can make yourself, along with spreads to smear on them, tapenades and pates. There's a bit of advice for doctoring olives or preparing cheese to share, but the emphasis is on things you prepare more than things you might purchase directly.

 

I have a suspicion that Peppler's vision of l'apero has as much to do with the nature of her friend group in Paris (and her nostalgia for those friends, after she moved back) as it does with what's customary in France, but I think that's inevitable. Imagine what a French woman who lived in New York as a young adult might write about American happy hour, for example! But I do feel inspired to try out a few more vermouth drinks this year.

Playing with Books

 
Playing with Books
The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book

by Jason Thompson

Quarry Books

2010

 
 
Playing with Books is a craft book about art projects created using printed books as a raw material. Thompson showcases about 30 projects, mostly of his own design, that the reader could attempt. He also showcases about 30 professional artists who create using books.
 
Reading through Thompson's suggested projects, I was struck by the fact that book crafts are mostly just paper crafts, using a specific source of paper. Thompson suggests making envelopes and origami, beads made of rolled-up pages, and various items of jewelry or decor from shapes cut out of the paper, usually circles or butterflies. For a few projects, Thompson leaves the spine on the book and fans it out - by combining 2 or 3 like this you can make a cylinder, which can then by modified by folding or cutting the pages to make shapes. In a couple cases, he suggests laminating paper and plastic together and using the composite to make purses or bags.
 
The projects are mostly easy enough for an adult to do together with a kid, though for any of the projects more difficult than that, I don't really think he provides enough instructions. Each project gets 2-6 pages, usually 4. The first page is always just a large photo of the finished project, the second only has the name and a list of materials. This section takes up the vast majority of the book, in a way that feels unbalanced.
 
The artist showcases mostly get only one page, very occasionally two. Each of these pages then includes several smaller photos of the artist's works, along with a very brief bio, probably written by the artists themselves. Compared to the very (overly?) spacious layouts of the crafting section, this part seems quite cramped, and for many of the artworks, I wished for a larger photo so I could see the details better. 
 
The artists often modify whole books, creating sculptural objects that are both built up and cut away. Many of the books were soaked in water so they could be reshaped, warped, wrinkled, splayed, twisted, the pages cut into strips like tentacles. I found the collages and assemblies the most interesting. I think that, ultimately, I may be more interested in seeing really skilled book artworks made by others than I am in attempting to make my own little craft projects. In retrospect, I am struck by just how exceptional Good Mail Day is among craft books - the projects are achievable, the instructions are genuinely helpful, and the authors write in a way that's conversational and that genuinely encourages you to try.

The One-Bottle Cocktail

 
 
The One-Bottle Cocktail

More than 80 Recipes with Fresh Ingredients and a Single Spirit

by Maggie Hoffman

photos by Kelly Puleio

Ten Speed Press

2018

 

 

I got a copy of The One-Bottle Cocktail a few years ago when it first came out. It was getting talked up on NPR and maybe some other news services I was following at the time. And a lot of the drinks in it do sound good, but this is not a book for me. The recipes collected here, most of them anyway, are intended for foodies with well-stocked kitchens. For me, the need to pull a second bottle of liqueur or amaro or bitters out of my cabinet is much less of an obstacle than a recipe that calls for me to prepare my own fresh fruit juice or infuse an unusual vegetable syrup.
 
There's an irony here. In her introduction, author Maggie Hoffman mentions the frustration of finding a cocktail recipe that calls for buying a a bottle of some ingredient that won't have any other uses. But almost all the homemade ingredients in the book are used in only a single recipe, possibly something you wouldn't buy to cook with otherwise. The way Hoffman collected her recipes means that across the book, there are two different simple sugar syrups, and three different concentrations of honey mixed with water. Is that better? It might be a little cheaper, and they'll go bad if you don't use them, instead of hanging out in the back of your cabinet, either to haunt you or to be used again later. Maybe it's a matter of preference.
 
Hoffman found recipes from professional bartenders all over the country, and each recipe credits the original creator and their bar, along with Hoffman's own notes and instructions, and sometimes a photo, either of the preparation or the finished drink. The recipes are organized into sections based on the one bottle they use - vodka, gin, tequila, rum, brandy, and whiskey. At the end of each section is a list of cocktails from the other parts of the book that Hoffman thinks would taste good with that spirit.
 
The recipes vary in complexity, but are mostly on the higher end. There are only a few that only need jam or a single homemade syrup, and maybe lemon or lime juice. Hoffman is very big on the idea of making your own fruit juices by chopping something into cubes, dropping them in the food processor, and first pouring, then pressing the juice through a fine mesh strainer. One recipe notably calls for juicing an entire watermelon this way, something I doubt I have either the stamina or patience for. Other times, she suggests just muddling the fruit before dropping it into the cocktail shaker along with the other ingredients, and double straining during the pour.
 
The size of the recipes also varies, with most making single drinks, a handful making pairs, and a sizable minority making batches of 8 or 12. The punches might be where the idea of this book shines best. They're often for a special occasion, where you don't mind doing a bit more work, and where all the prep can be handled well before everything is combined. The lower alcohol of these recipes is probably also good for most kinds of parties, and by making many drinks at once, you'll use up all the juice or syrup you made, with no leftovers.

Easy Tiki

 
 

Easy Tiki

A Modern Revival with 60 Recipes

by Chloe Frechette

photographs by Lizzie Munro

Ten Speed Press

2020

 

 

Easy Tiki is a cookbook that does more than it promises, but also maybe doesn't do the thing it promises to do quite as well as I'd like. 

 

Author Chloe Frechette offers a menu of simplified tiki cocktails, each with 6 ingredients or less. But she also introduces them with a succinct history of the original tiki phenomenon and the modern tiki revival, and she suggests other elements of stage-dressing, from glasses and garnishes to music and ambience, to help complete the tiki mood. Each cocktail has the promised short ingredient list ... but collectively there must still be a hundred or more bottles of recommended ingredients.

 

Tiki started in southern California during the 1930s, when Don the Beachcomber opened a bar to celebrate the end of Prohibition with elaborate, complex drinks shrouded in mystique and lots and lots of Caribbean and Polynesian decorations. Don was beloved, but secretive and protective of his recipes. In northern California, Trader Vic imitated Don's style while adding his own twist, and of the two of them, probably did the most to spread, popularize, and commercialize tiki. After WWII, soldiers returning from the Pacific theater brought home a fascination with Asian and Polynesian culture, and tiki benefitted from this broader interest.

 

The original tiki trend mostly died out by 1970. In the early 2000s, revivalists like Beachbum Berry began learning the history of tiki, interviewing the surviving original participants, and reconstructing the original secret recipes. Alongside the general craft cocktail boom, tiki is also experiencing a modern resurgence.

 

Tiki drinks are mostly based on rum and fresh fruit juices. They blend strong, sweet, sour, and spice. Traditionally, they're complex and multilayered - rather than using one rum, one juice, one liqueur, each element of the cocktail will be multiplied, while retaining the original ratios. These combinations make it hard to identify the individual ingredients by taste, and give tiki drinks part of their mystery. This is traditionally heightened and played up with opaque glasses, large garnishes, windowless bars, and an emphasis on exoticism in the decor.

 

I liked Frechette's concise overview of tiki style. She provides enough references to musicians, artists, and books by other tiki historians that it would be easy for an interested newcomer to decide on their next step after reading this.

 

The thing I wish Frechette had done better would have been to organize her recipes a bit more so that the interested home bartender could get just a small core stable of ingredients, with additions that are usable in more than just one drink. Part of what makes tiki 'hard' or intimidating or just expensive isn't only that one drink has 8-12 ingredients, it's that that drink is recommended side-by side with another that needs 6-10 more if you want to make them both. Frechette addresses the first problem, but not the second.

 

I know I'm being a little unfair here. First, Frechette didn't write her own recipes. As an editor of Punch magazine, she sourced them, drawing on advice from bartenders around the country who are recognized by their peers for their excellence. Trusting the experts puts some factors beyond her control. Second, yes, she's right, a 6-ingredient cocktail is easier to make than a 10-bottle drink. And third, it's never really fair to the author to judge them based on the book you wish they'd written instead.

 

But a lot of times the simplification was to reduce from a blend of 3 rums to just 1, or to hold the falernum or orgeat. But those are exactly the sort of common ingredients that would be in every home tiki bar. Leaving one of those out in favor of a homemade syrup that's only used in a single recipe doesn't necessarily make anything easier. Nor does recommending only one rum, when maybe all 60 recipes in the book have a different 'only one' recommendation - whereas I suspect smart blends of a few reusable staples could serve as well. If you the reader select only a few drinks to try though, then you'll be able to get by with just enough bottles to serve your picks.

Terrarium Craft

 
Terrarium Craft
Create 50 Magical, Miniature Worlds

by Amy Bryan Aiello and Kate Bryant
photographs by Kate Baldwin

Timber Press
2011

 

 

Terrarium Craft is a craft book that explains how to assemble terrariums, and provides inspirational images to help beginners get started.

 
Before reading, I hadn't realized that only the most humidity-loving tropical plants can really tolerate bring in closed terrariums. Most want more air circulation. I also hadn't thought about it, but you need to water the plants regularly, and because there's so little soil, feed them fertilizer. I'm beginning to understand why my past terrariums died!

 
Of the 50 inspirational models, about 10 are 'forest terrariums' that mostly feature carnivorous plants, about 10 'beach terrariums' and 20 'desert terrariums' that mostly feature succulents, and about 10 'fantasy terrariums' that mostly use moss and lichens and occupy several jars. (The cover image is a fantasy terrarium.)

 
I don't know why deserts got so much more attention than the others, but the authors use a good variety of plants, so you can learn about the care of each. They also show off a variety of jar shapes, and suggest a number of decorative additions.

 
I think some of my favorites use miniatures, rather than just crystals and shells. Tiny houses, statuettes of animals, I love the contrast between them and the plants. Given my previous failures, if I try again, it'll be with a very open moss terrarium, since those need the least care, as long as they get enough fresh air.

Re-Bound

 

Re-Bound
Creating Handmade Books from Repurposed and Recycled Materials

by Jeannine Stein

Quarry Books

2009

 

 

Re-Bound is another craft book - combining photos of handmade art objects with instructions for making your own - but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Good Mail Day.
 

I suspect the difference at least partially lies in the relative difficulty of the two crafts. Mail art requires fewer skills and so is more accessible to amateurs, so Hinchcliff and Wheeler wrote their book as an enthusiastic invitation to start making mail art for the first time. (There are also few if any mistakes that could totally 'ruin' your project.) 

 
Making books (or at least making books well) requires more precision and skill, and so it requires practice and experience, as well as familiarity and comfort with the tools and procedures. Stein writes for an audience who can already craft handmade books from normal materials and now wants the added challenge and fun of making even-more-difficult books out of recycled materials.

 
So I enjoyed looking at Stein's books, and reading her descriptions and justifications for her crafting decisions, but the instructions themselves were basically lost on me, and by the end, I'd stopped even skimming them.

 
The cover image is a tiny book whose cover was made from leftover Starbucks gift cards. She also made a book bound with paint swatches and one wrapped in a felted sweater. She recommends, but doesn't demonstrate, using record sleeves, although a couple projects use a similar 'chipboard' material.

 
Like Hinchcliff and Wheeler, Stein also includes a gallery of handmade books by other artists. My favorite was an accordion fold book made of Monopoly property cards, with the blank side of the money as a writing surface, and a box to hold it made from the game board.

Good Mail Day

 
 
Good Mail Day

A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art

by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler

Quarry Press

2009

 

 

Good Mail Day is a craft book - half photos of art, half instructions for making similar art yourself. In this case, it's 'mail art,' which refers to any sort of stationary and envelope that are in some way decorated or embellished by the sender. Good Mail Day also has advice for forming pen-pal relationships with other mail artists, and joining what they call 'the Network' of mail artists nationally and globally.

 
Hinchcliff and Wheeler favor a style of mail art that takes advantage of collage and assemblage of found objects, cut up and reassembled to make your own envelopes or paper, or as decorative accents. They also use hand-carved rubber stamps to add an extra pop. They favor immediacy and contingency - look for interesting papers around you as you go about your day, collect them, and use them to make your next mail art. 

 
They argue that working quickly, rather than trying to craft a perfect letter, makes it easier to send out more letters, and makes each mail art project indelibly 'of the moment' because it bears the mark of wherever you were and whatever you were doing when you made it. They think this also encourages you to go out more and see more new places so that you can find more materials.

 
Mail art can simply be traded back and forth between pairs of artists, or one can put out a call for submissions. The most famous submission-based mail art project, although not mentioned here, is probably Post Secret. The Good Mail Day book itself is also full of examples of such submissions.

 
It's a fun, inspiring book, and reminds me of Nick Bantock's epistolary novels made up of his decorative letters. Hinchcliff and Wheeler's aesthetic recommendations (and the reasoning beind them) remind me the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Situationists, with their use of cut-ups, collage, and found objects.