My Creative Writing Portfolio Adventure

by LP

And I’m back! I had planned for this post to go up last week, but after finishing up my portfolio I still had exams to prepare and proposals to write and then it was today already!

So, my portfolio. For my creative writing class I was expected to hand in a portfolio consising of 20 – 30 A4 pages of writing, a two page process reflection, and of course an index and a title. It also said that while not obligatory, nice paper and such was appreciated, so I of course went on a trek to my dear friends at Vlieger Papier. At first I thought I would just put my portfolio in a regular binder, but then I saw a green art-portfolio thing and this happened (as usual, all pictures can be embiggened by clicking on them):

The green thing is an art portfolio/travel folder, you know, the type you transport drawings in, or fancy paper. I decided to get the attachable clip thing pictured above right and attach it to the folder.

On the bottom right you can see how I measured out where the clip had to be attached by using a piece of paper with hole punches in the right location. As you can also see, I had some issues adjusting my hole punch, resulting in useless holes on the right.

The funky tool thing is my awl, or “pointy piercy thing, you know, for paper things” as I usually call it. The white thing on top of it is a piece of foam to avoid having the pointy piercy thing pointily piercing my hand when I pick it up from the box I keep it in. The piece of foam is also the home of both my bookbinding and weave sowing needles.

After measuring out the holes, I punched them with my awl (photo left), widened the holes (not pictured), put the screw-like thing through (top right) and then literally hammered the clip onto the folder.

This took some force, generated by anger and frustration I felt over at that point not having written my second story while the deadline was a mere 9 hours away. This is also why I have no pictures of the actual writing or printing, as I ended up priting everything at 16:00, when the deadline was at 17:00 and I still had to travel for 30 minutes. #livingontheedge

Thankfully public transport was on my side and I got to the Bungehuis at 16:45, where I proceeded to finish up the assembly of my portfolio. As you can see in the picture on the left, I had not only taken my folder and my printed out materials, but also my hole punch, tape and a piece of cardboard, and got to work.

After almost breaking my hole punch due to forgetting that I had chosen to use fancy eco-friendly 120 grams off-white paper instead of regular 80 grams paper, I ended up with a neat little pile of hole punched fancy eco-friendly 120 grams off-white paper topped off with a ultra-fancy kinda-expensive handmade off-white cotton-based paper cover sheet. Because I’m hardcore like that. The heart covers my IRL name and such, fear not: there is not actually a giant red heart on my cover page.

In the picture on the right you see the finished product: the cardboard wraparound has my name and the teacher’s name on the other side, and a piece of orange “Fragile” tape on the back. I then put it in my teacher’s pigeonhole and checked the time: 16:53. I did a “Yesss!” like I’d just won something and proceeded to call my mom, whose sigh of relief could be heard down the hall.