Book of Shadows

When we got our two puppies, I decided to take lots of pictures. We bought disposable camera after disposable camera and took lots of pictures. When I printed them out, I always got the cd so I could download them to my computer. I took the pictures and edited them. I put captions on them and made them cute. Aubrie on the other hand loves to scrapbook and now that we have Addie, she scrapbooks a lot. So Aubrie does the books while I do my scrapbooking style on the computer.

So you ask, what does this got to do with the Book of Shadows? Well I have decided to take my electronic library and create a nice Book of Shadows. I use the computer because I have lousy handwriting and I have OCD and I am the type that does it over and over and over again. So I will be using Power Point and my creativity.

Now there are a lot of people that say that a BOS must be written by a persons own hand but I am putting my creativity in it so I am still empowering it. I also have a 16 GB flash drive full of information and pictures and I think it will be good to have things laid out.

So this is the start of my project to create my physical Book of Shadows. Now I have a new project that to do and I can also share it with you. So the first thing to do is figure out how I am going to sort everything.  So I am off to the internet to find BOS table of content list. This will help me in making my own section. We are all different so some sections will be bigger than others. For example in my Symbol section, the Ankhs will be as large as my pages on the Pentacles and Pentagrams as the Ankh is one of my main symbols.

Right now I am putting together the Charges, the Reed and other stuff together. I am leaving the pages plain as I will print them on special paper. I have stock of scroll paper and it is about time I put it to good use. One thing that you must take in consideration is your margins when you bind the pages in a book. If you are using a three ring and going to use a hole puncher to bind it then most programs are already have the margins set. If you are going to put the pages in page protectors then you will not need to worry as much but you will need to understand the printing margins. I have special paper that I will be printing on. If you go on line and use wallpaper and add your stuff on top then print it, then you have a white border as printers do not print the entire page.

Always print preview everything and I will be printing everything in black and white to check the margins before printing it on my paper. The design is has the rolled up scroll on the top and bottom so I will need to make sure I get my borders right. If you are computer savvy then you can always set your own borders to make sure the paper prints good.

Now when it comes book binding, well that is another story and complicated. I took graphic design in High School and my father was a silkscreener, so I have experience in making bumper stickers and note pads.  Book binding is similar to making note pads but different. You first need to know which kind of binding you want to do. There are several different types of book binding. It also depends on how big your book is and if you want to add to it or not. The list of different kinds of book binding are too endless to go into here. You will need to so some research if you want to go this route.

Another type of book is just plain report folders. They come in a variety of styles and colors. You can divide up sections into their own folder. I started to do this when I started out as I read better with a paper instead of computer screen. Funny now that paper is becoming obsolete but there are those of us who still need the written paper.

So I know that I have probable left you with more questions then answers and I am sorry for it. I do hope that I have given you something to think about.