I have been thinking about ways in which to show my work to people in the flesh – not on my phone screen, but actual printed images so they can get a full idea of my work and how it should be viewed. While I am a fan of sharing my work on social media it’s not how I envisage my work to be seen long term.
I decided that I wanted to make a portfolio for my work to go in which I could then take with me places and show people what I actually do but…it needed to be transportable, fit in most of the bags I own, look neat and tidy, professional, easy to add to or change the works I want to carry around and be durable – not a lot to ask is to? I first thought about a ringbinder A4 is pretty portable but I ruled that one out fairly quickly as I don’t always want to or need to carry a huge bag around with me, plus they can get fairly heavy with stuff in them, not to mention the corners seem to get beaten up and mangled fairly quickly too. I then had a look at some things on the Internet (I googled small art portfolio) which came up with various zip up folders with handles and straps and all sorts of other get up, again these were nice but not what I was looking for – they were all a bit big and clumsy. Then I stumbled upon this article http://drawpj.com/make-a-portable-art-promotion-portfolio/ which sounded perfect to me! I have several Filofax binders varying in size from mini to A5 that are sat around not doing much but looking pretty and getting admired (by myself) several times a week. I decided to see what I could do with one of them.
I chose the smallest binder I had – a mini Classic (Cross) Filofax in French navy (which I love but has proven too small for me to use as a diary/personal organiser – I much prefer a personal sized one). I removed the diary and other sections in it and measured the pages, used some black card stock and cut it to the size of the removed pages, hole punched the card with a single hole punch, then worked out what size I would need to print my images out to best fit the card pages I had made. Once the image size was chosen and images printed onto my chosen photo paper I then cut the images out using a guillotine (for nice straight, crisp edges). I then mounted the images onto the black card pages and placed them into the binder! I’m super pleased with how it turned out! Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to me to take images through this process (but will when I start adding more images to it) but here are a few of the finished article!
