TMI

There’s such a thing as “Too Much Information.” Right now, though, I’m experiencing a different kind of TMI: Too Many Ideas.

My daughter has asked me to build her a special project, and naturally I’m happy to drop anything else I’m doing to make it for her. She recently acquired an incredible old Bible. Published in 1739 (just 21 years older than her 1760 house), it’s huge, almost phonebook sized, and contains a wealth of the original owners’ family history handwritten in it from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The project she asked me to make is a formal box to keep and display it in, and I was free to design it any way I wanted. Easy enough – boxes are among my favorite projects – and all I needed was an idea or two to come up with a design. And where better to come up with ideas than the Internet?

The trouble is, there are just way too many ideas. Simply typing “Bible box” into Google got me 140,000,000 results. Yes, seven zeroes. Fine-tuning cut down the number a little by including words like “wooden,” “walnut,” “lidded,” and especially “vintage.” After all, this Bible is 282 years old, and I want to build a box perfectly suited for what it will contain.

If you’re like me when you search online for project ideas, you first get overwhelmed. But then, it’s an easy matter of picking examples that include some of the things you already planned to use in the project – in this case, traits of 18th and 19th century Bible boxes – and incorporate them with the modern basics of what the box physically needs to be and how it’ll be used.

In the end, I’m still designing the project on my own. The myriad ideas Google provides then serve not as a guide or blueprint to use for the whole project, but rather to enhance my own design and construction. The project is still all mine. And, of course, my daughter’s.