We went to Jim Thorpe, PA over the weekend to walk around and go shopping. Yes, shopping! IN STORES! It was the first time I had been shopping in a store that didn’t sell groceries in 4 months since COVID started. Jim Thorpe is this adorable historic town with shops, museums and train ride scenic tours. Unfortunately, the museums were still closed and the train tour wasn’t running but most of the shops and restaurants were open.
The shops carry all sorts of items from homemade soaps and new age items to antiques and books to handmade crafts, mead and wine. One of the shops, BeeStung, had character/movie themed items like jewelry, boxes, bottles and other tchotchkes that were made by the shop owner.
I couldn’t resist all the Alice in Wonderland themed stuff! I love different versions of the story and have quite a few renditions already from novels to graphic novels to pop up books! This was the perfect opportunity to buy props for photos for my bookstagram account.
With loot in hand and plenty of Alice in Wonderland books at home, I was ready and excited, to set up my displays. Check out my photo shoot from this weekend.
For those of you who don’t know, Bookstagram is a community on Instagram that shares photos of all things books! There’s also a lot of writers and authors that are part of the community. Not only are the photos people share amazing but the community is really supportive.
I started my Bookstagram account kind of by accident. I wanted a place where I could share short quotes and writings that weren’t in a long blog format.
I started by sharing a few posts that included my writings on backgrounds that I made with an app. Then, I realized that I have this awesome secretary desk and vintage books that I could take photos of and pair them with my writings. So I took a bunch of pictures one day and started sharing them on Instagram with short passages I had written.
I don’t know how, but I stumbled across these other accounts who shared photos of books. Not just books, but entire libraries of books. Shelves and shelves of books and bookish items. I instantly fell in love with all the beautiful book aesthetics!
I realized that I could do something similar but combine my writing and marketing knowledge with it. Now I share photos of books, journals, my writings and marketing tips.
I actually took a photo of one of my journals, open, so that I could use one of my editing apps to write my passages on it for posts. I hope to gain more followers, but in the meantime it’s just been really fun to set up the photo shoots and share my thoughts with a like minded community.
C.A. Sullivan
The Illuminated Page 