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I decided to keep a carving-a-day journal for September 2003. I was preparing to teach an unbound journal class in October. Students would be making journal cards that would fit loose into a decorated box. I wanted another sample to show students. I also wanted an excuse to do a bunch of carvings.

I always set parameters for daily projects. I had a busy month coming up and didn't want things to get out of hand. I decided to do all the carvings on 1.5 x 1.5 inch blocks. This had the hoped for result of keeping time spent on the project to under 30 minutes a day, including sketching and block preparation. The images are all stamped using Brilliance Ink graphite black.

The carvings were printed on 3.125 x 3.125 inch "cards" of 140 lb. hot press watercolor paper. I rounded the corners with a corner rounder punch. (Ouch, the watercolor paper was tough to punch through. You can still see the round edges on some of the scans.)

All carvings were done on Mars Carve white polyvinyl, except for September 1 and 6. I had some thin generic stuff I thought I might use, but it didn't take a line nicely so I abandoned it and returned to my favorite carving surface, Mars Carve, using it by mistake again on the 6th.

I set out with the intention that I would draw and carve something every day. I wanted to experiment with my use of line and push beyond what I normally try to do with my carvings. I decided that since I don't have a live-in model any longer I would allow myself to use drawings I'd done previously, if nothing presented itself on a given day.

As with all my journals, I determined that even carvings that didn't work would remain. Loose cards or not, there would be no cast offs.

During the month of September I continued my regular visual journal and many of the sketches that formed the basis of these carvings are found in those pages. It makes a nice parallel record.

The carving-a-day journal has 32 cards: a title card; a card for each day of the month; and a summation card. The thirty third image of this journal set shows the box that I beaded to hold the cards.