fun with notebooks and stickers

i have this quirky habit of buying notebooks and keeping them for years for no reason at all (i just liked 'em). one day while i was walking through some stalls in a christmas tyangge sale and i saw these stacks of stickers. the stickers, which were mostly based on popular cartoon and anime creatures as well as well-known characters from video games, struck me as cute. then suddenly a bulb lit up in my mind.

without much ado, i bought 8 stacks of these stickers and when i got home i took out my notebooks.

i always had this vague idea that someday — if i had the time — i'd be filling these notebooks with stories that have lain dormant in my mind, so i thought "wouldn't it be nice if i could create a make-believe photo album for this character in my mind, and then make these scenes come alive by inserting stickers and putting labels under/beside them?" it would be like having my own illustrated book, except that it will feature my own stories.

the notion seemed silly at first, but after a few minutes i decided to do the whole thing.

the first few pages were a hit-and-miss affair, but eventually i got better (see some samples below). aside from the stickers and the notebooks, i also used a sign pen, a couple of technical pens (0.1 and 0.3 staedtler or rotring tech pens will do) and a pair of scissors to trim some of the stickers into more appropriate sizes and shapes

don't get me wrong. it be can challenging and frustrating at times (not to mention a bit too heavy on the pocket when you're on a tight budget). i had to tear up and re-do a lot of pages during my first attempts, but the important thing was that i had fun and i enjoyed the acitivity. right now, i'm more than halfway through on my fourth notebook. the story is still ongoing (it's a work in progress) but i like the idea of translating my ideas — which would have ended up as a half-formed, hazy thought before eventually fading into oblivion — into something i can take out and look at anytime i want.

more on this later.