a home without books is a body without soul

I've come across a few good books that I feel really get me thinking and getting my creativity flowing that I'd like to share. These are kept separately from the rest of my fiction and non-fiction and reference books and magazines. These books share the shelf that is home to my sketchbooks, creativity journal, and folders stuffed full of eye catching articles and images  carefully torn from magazines.

First is The Happy Book.

It is just as the title implies, a happy book. Just seeing the color of the book made me happy. Then I opened it and found that it's one of those wonderful books where you get to scribble and fill it in however you'd like! Each page has a prompt that gives you a starting point of what to draw or write. I like writing in it when I am indeed happy and then looking back on it for inspiration when I can't seem to shake a grumpy mood. I have a rule of not to fill out more than one page at a time. I don't write in it every day, sometimes not even every week. But seeing it on the shelf when I have a few spare minutes is like opening the cookie jar to find there is only one cookie left... and it's all yours!





Wreck This Journal was a gift from my friend, Diana. It's by one of my favorite bloggers, Keri Smith. I could spend hours going back through her archives on her website and I'd love to eventually get all her books. She always inspires me to completely step outside of the box. Wreck This Journal is similar to The Happy Book in that each pages gives you a suggestion/instruction. However, in this book it is to literally destroy the pages.  One page suggests you tie a string around the book and drag it around. Another suggests you cut along the dotted line and crumple the page up.  It's full of suggestions that no other book would ever encourage and that's maybe what I love most about it. There is a reserved part of me that likes things neat and orderly, a part that needs straight lines and papers to be stacked evenly. This book tells that part of me to go find something to organize, while the other part of me has fun being creatively destructive.


I came across this chair a few years ago and fell in love... this is a book lovers dream!

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Now I'm off to play... my Adobe CS5 software was delivered yesterday and there are designs just waiting to be created... Happy Saturday :)