This guest post is from my mom, Martha Doherty. She is hard to acknowledge because she doesn’t have a huge internet presencence, but I am very grateful that she wrote this post to help get content to the blog while I’m in Europe. There are a few more posts from her coming you way in the next two weeks. Thanks Mama!
It has been said that “Inspiration without perspiration is hallucination”. Over the past month I have experienced all three through a new project I’ve been working on.
Inspiration: Every week I greatly anticipate Wordless Wednesday. When the wonderful book instillations of Su Blackwell were posted I was blown away.
I really have no idea why these art pieces seemed so wonderful to me – they just touched a cord and I was inspired. Clicking on the provided link transported me to Amazon to see her Fairy Tale Princess book and down in the section of “Customers who bought this item also bought” was this wonderful “how to” book.
Hallucination: Now everyone who knows me knows I am not artistic or creative. I am a financial analyst with awesome Excel skills. The only creative thing I have ever done in my life is produce two creative children. However, for whatever reason I thought I would order the book and produce some book art.
Perspiration: Well after a trip to Michaels for some art supplies, I started cutting up magazines. Little pieces of paper scattered around me like dandruff on the couch. I was beginning to get a little frustrated and decided I needed a second book. So back to Amazon and I ordered this book.
Now with both books and my self-healing cutting board and X –acto knife, I combined two projects one from each book and produced this:
I am unreasonably proud of this art project, texting pictures of its progress to my children like new parents send pictures of their baby. I also think working with anything that is self –healing is a bonus. So, while I’m planning my next project and wondering what inspires you? Let me know in the comments.
Alison Doherty 
Wow!! That’s so beautiful!!! I need to get Book Art. As for what inspires me, seeing beautiful projects like that is a sure source of inspiration. Also, I’m inspired by nature–hearing the birds, seeing the blue sky, and especially clouds. Great books inspire me too.
Thanks for replying – nature always inspires me too, even though I am a city girl at heart.
First of all, awesome to see one of the Allison’s moms posting on the blog (I wish my mom was cool enough to be willing to write guests posts for my blog) and secondly, that book art is truly fantastic. I’m not sure how you had the patience to tackle that, but it is an awesome project…I might have to give it a try…
Patience is not one of my virtues either, but this has been very fun.