Rescuing Old Books

These days, I am not only a cat rescuer but I am also rescuing books.  Signed up for an online course being taught by Diana Trout (from whom I took a class last year at Journalfest, see photo below) called Rescue Book Journals. 

I am learning how to turn an old book into a handmade journal.  Here is how my first project is coming along:  I started with this old book called "Girl in Ten Thousand". 

It has a really cool picture on the spine.  It looks like a girl in a hat holding a binocular case but I'm not entirely sure.  As far as I can tell, the story itself is about a girl training to be a nurse and appears to be part of a series of "a desirable assortment of books for girls, by standard and favorite authors", or so the Chicago based publishers say on the back page.  Wonder what constitutes a "standard" author?  Mrs. Meade appears to have contributed at least 3 stories to the series.

The book itself was already in rough shape, the pages had already been separated from the spine (but look at that lovely bookbinding stitch!):

I'm not sure how old the book is, as there does not appear to be a publishing date anywhere in the book itself, but the inscription is dated 1931:

Having removed the pages (no doubt they will come in handy for some other project at a later date), I have glued in some new, decorative end papers and here is the result: 

I intend to use this book to document the first part of my second half-century on this planet, so I included some scrapbook paper with a ruler counting up to 49 on the far left hand side and then stamped the number 50 onto what will be the left inside cover.  I glued in some handmade paper (complete with bits of cedar leaves!) in the spine (not handmade by me, purchased at a funky little gift store in downtown Toronto several months ago) and then added more scrapbook paper to finish the rest of the inside cover.

The original 7 Gypsies paper I used featured the word "abundance" (always a good concept) but I decided to cut it down and just use "dance".  Because I figure a 50 year old should have lots of dancing in her life.  It's already working - here is Katrina, one of my rescue cats, doing a little dance of her own!