There’s a new word up on One Little Word! This time Denise asked us to create with the word LOST in mind.

The story behind my project begins a long time ago. About 6 or 7 years ago I felt stuck at my job and didn’t know what to do about it. Did I want to switch careers? Was there another job I could do within the organisation? I had the chance to do a career path assessment course. It was a group course and the group members were fascinating and a huge inspiration.

At one time I think we had to tell about something we enjoyed doing in our spare time. One guy told the group about how he photographed random things that people had LOST on the go. You know: that shoe lying in the gutter, a shawl hanging in the bushes. Or maybe one lonely sock…

I know that when I see something like that just lying in the street I always think: but how do you loose just one shoe? Did someone throw it at someone else? Was it Cinderella being hasty? What the heck happened here?

The man called his project ‘Verloren lijfheden’. At least that’s what I remember… Maybe I’m wrong, because ‘lijfheden’ isn’t actually a word in Dutch. So I wouldn’t know how to translate it for you. Something (but not exactly) like ‘Lost body-parts’. No matter what the exact name of this project was, I thought it was so awesome that I’ve never forgotten about it.

Fast forward a few weeks ago: I was attending an illustration course at Elle Aime. On the second day of the course we worked with paper and one of the assignments was to create a book cover. I already had this months One Little Word on my mind and all of a sudden things clicked… The subject of my book cover had to be ‘something’ LOST and then… it was obvious to me it had to be about ‘Verloren lijfheden’.

Every single thing on the page was hand-cut by me. Even the title… Ha! Who needs a Silhouette?! No, of course I’m keeping my Silhouette, but it’s pretty neat to know I can do without!

Thanks for stopping by today! Go and see what the others created here at the One Little Word blog!