A bit about Decos

Here is a picture of the cover of one of my decos. This is the deco that I mentioned was being displayed this week on the home page of one of the Yahoo! deco groups that I belong to. The theme for this deco is 'Vintage Automobiles' This deco has been floating around in the art community for a few months now. I have no idea how long it will take for this deco to be completed and come home to me, or even if it ever will. Hopefully one day it will come home full of wonderful art. It will be so neat to see how it turned out!

So, finally, as promised, here is a bit of an explanation of what decos are:

-A deco is a bit like a circle journal, small art book, or as some call them 'friendship books'

-Topics for Decos usually focus more around art then journalling

-When creating a deco you basically create a small, flat and light book (so that mailing is easy and not too expensive).

-You create the book with a binding method of your choice...(anything from stab binding, to pamphlet binding, to coil bound,jump rings, or just plain ribbon, pretty much the sky is the limit.)

-In your deco you will have several pages for various artists to sign. Decos usually are made of at least 2 pages (which usuallygives 5-6 blank sides giving oportunity for 5-6 artists to work in the deco). You can make your deco with as many pages as you like, But keep in mind, that the deco needs to be light, and that the more pages that it has in it, the longer it will take for the deco to be filled up and returned home to you. I have not often seen a deco with more then 6 pages (14 sides). Most decos I see have room for between 5-9 artists to work in them.

-So, once the deco is made. The creator picks a theme for the deco. Themes can be anything from 'Monkys' to 'Encouragment and Inspiration' or anything else you can imagine. The most popular themes seem to be themes that involve vintage art/photography.

-Once a theme has been chosen, the creator decorates the front page of their deco acordingly.

-Ocassionally the creator will put instructions for how they would like their deco decorated inside the front cover of the deco. Other times the creator will leave the deco without directions, allowing each artist to interpret the theme as they wish.

-Once the creator has decorated the cover of the deco and the first page in the deco. They will put their address on the deco. This can either be on the inside front cover, or on the inside or outside of the back cover of the deco. Putting your address somewhere on thedeco is VERY important so that people know where to send the deco home to after it is full of art.

-Now that the deco is made, decorated and addressed the creating artist will send it to another artist to work in. This next artist may be a friend, a pen pal, someone from a RR, someone from a local Deco swap group, or someone they signed up for a blind swap with on a deco internet group.

-I usually do the later. In which case, when that artist is done working in my deco they will send it on to another artist and so on, so that one day when I recieve my completed deco home it is full of art from a variety of artists from around the world. Some whos art I may be familure with, and others whos art I may not know.

I have been making and working in artistic decos now for a little over a year, and I have already had several completed decos come home to me. My completed decos have turned out beautifully! They are quite a treasure to me!