Day 11 / The Isolation Journals

Reflect on a moment where you did something that left you feeling nourished and sated. Where hours passed, yet you didn’t even know it. When you were right where you needed to be. Maybe it’s a memory of spending time with a loved one, or a long discarded childhood activity—dancing, drawing, shooting hoops in the driveway. Maybe it’s a more recent hobby—kneading sourdough or, like me, making elaborate cheese plates. Write about this experience. Write about being nourished and what it means to you.

Those paper box birthday cards.

Layer 1: Paper the decided colour of the box's body, after tender consideration of the project's colour palette and material acquisition trip(s) to Popular, UrbanWrite, Art Friend. Around a base square, four walls of more squares with heart shapes scored to fold in half, connecting each side - this layer is the largest, each subsequent layer at least 1cm smaller on every side, cut to precision.

Layer 2: A different-coloured layer (still adhering to The Colour Palette) 1cm smaller than Layer 1, without need for the connecting heart shapes anymore, only the four square walls... unless you want another box within the box - the world box is your oyster. 

Layer 3: Repeat Layer 2 if you're really that into it but stopping at Layer 2 is just fine.

Attach each layer's base to the one before it aka each larger one aka what else.

Decoration

• Proceed to bombard each layer with photos and little pop-up faculties and dynamic-twisting-flipping-interactive mechanisms. Make your loved one physically pick up the pictures you made to look like mini polaroids -don't forget cute notes or quotes written on the back- and invite them to pull at little pieces of card stock that make mOre photos flip one after the other successively like their own little flip book -so satisfactory; why I always include it even though it is a goddamn pain to make with its tiny parts and always eventually falls apart after it has been in the gift receiver's possession for about two days-.

• They say diamonds are a girl's best friend so go ahead and decorate your box card with rhinestones! If you're in the mood for a little more bling you can add glitter of all colours -even though I recently learnt that they are microplastics that never rot but some may argue that sea animals enjoy being Barbie girls in their 'Life in plastic (it's fantastic)'-. Not forgetting good old lace trimmings that you can find in Daiso as rolls with adhesives already on the back saving you from cutting about half a thousand mini double-sided tape pieces. You're welcome.

• If you have leftover space because you wrongly decided to make a box within the box and/or Layer 3 and are fussing over how to fill them up, simply draw random doodles (with a glitter pen of course) or paste patterned scrapbook paper to make it look like a more intentional absence of material that professes your love. 

Cover: Last but not least, to make your box card's cover. I hope you noted down the dimensions of Layer 1 otherwise I'm sure it's possible to panic-measure it again. It consists of a square the same size as your Layer 1 base square but with flaps that you fold down and cut at an angle to be able to attach to each other -watch the Youtube videos this instruction manual was never really meant to be instructive-. 

And there you have it! Nicely fold your layers up into the cubic symbol of I'm Extra, pop the cover on top to hold it in place and voila! When whoever apparently so deserving lifts the cover imagining an ordinary box containing socks, the flaps of every layer should fall outward like a blooming flower and they will be face to face with incoherent inside jokes and fetus pictures they archived from their Instagram and had tried so hard to forget. Just like this, your friendship is secured for eternity on the basis that you have the soft copy of all those images and have explicitly expressed your potential for blackmail.

Oh right! 

Nourishment.

What it means to me.

[At this point Elle finds difficulty breaking from her tootfuk narrative voice as seen above.]

I've made two of these birthday box cards, each time spending many hours measuring with rulers (big feat, I'm not a precise person), cutting paper and double-sided tape. Both times I stayed up till late in the night to complete them. The night of the first box card I got scolded by my mother for the lengths I go to for so material a thing, that could get only so much in return. 

I remember barely using my phone and barely thinking about much else other than Snip Snip, Wheep, Psshzt (sound of cutting paper, removing non-sticky side of double-sided tape, paper sliding over more paper). I slathered my love on the gift made with my two inessential hands just like the glue stick runs over and across. There was no fear, ubiquitous as it can be. There was no expectation of reciprocation. There wasn't the awareness of love or special feelings or best friends forever. The walls of my room would fall away and I was held in suspension outside of time and space. It was freeing to focus my everything on a paper cube.

It became my life's mission, the only essential thing.