I chose to critique my dot book. I’ve come a long way since then.

The cover isn’t so bad… except that the paper on either side of the matboard started peeling off almost as soon as I put it on. Rubber cement isn’t the greatest adhesive for me. More of it gets on me than on the project. And spraymount ends up messy too. That’s why I’ve switched to a glue runner. Repositionable, permanent, perfect straight line, no mess. Perfect for a slob like myself. *thumbs up*

My main issues with this book are technical/craft-related. I remember working in the studio until 3am the day it was due. The studio was crazy that night. Everyone was running around in a panic. I got my book bound just before the studio closed. Because of my fatigue, my craft suffered heavily. The all-nighter happened because I was still putting my job before school, and my afternoons were spent going to work downtown rather than working at school. I’ve learned better since then. I’ve learned that I get my homework done better and sooner if I just take a couple days off work. (Luckily, I have a job where every employee is a student, so they’re really flexible and understanding about taking time off for school.) With more time to work on my projects, I have more time to fix my craft problems and take my time so that most of those problems never happen.

The worst page of my book (craft-wise) is this one:

I don’t like to call a piece of work “bad,” but this page is pretty crappy. I piled colored dots on top of each other to create blends of colors. Great idea! However, the top layer started to pucker and curl as the rubber cement between the layers dried. So I was left with wrinkly dots in the middle of this page (those brown-ish ones there). I discovered this issue the day the project was due, and I didn’t have time to fix it. Again, if I had given myself more time to work on this book, I would’ve discovered the puckering issue sooner and had some time to fix it and try something different.

My concept was nice. Technology/computers/robots. It’s something I have a genuine interest in, and I had a lot of fun with it. So it kept my interest and attention throughout the whole duration of the project.

The best thing I learned from this was that I need to give myself enough time to fix my screwups. So now I do a little trick that forces me to give myself enough time. I change the due dates of projects in my notes. When a project is really due on Friday, I lie to myself and say it’s due on Wednesday. So if I see something wrong with the final product, I’ve given myself all of Thursday to fix it. (And if I get it fixed in a decent amount of time, I can still go to work that afternoon! Hooray!)

This project was a good lesson in time management and controlling my craft. And I’ve been improving ever since.