whirlwind weekend

I wrote on here about a week ago about how we were missing someone from my team at work. Well, I’ve been filling in for that person over the last 2 almost 3 weeks and I seem to have a talent for the position. So I’m applying for it! It will mean some changes to my schedule but nothing too major. I’m hoping I get it but if I don’t then I’m back to my regular schedule and same old job. We’ll see what happens. I think it will be good in terms of my art too, as it will leave me with regular hours, and working a typical week of only 40 hours. Yay.

So that being said I’ve been on a whirlwind of making books this weekend. My boss unearthed a treasure trove of old signs and passed them off too me. After a very funny request for a book made with the poster of our regional president, I was off with a good stack of posters. I, being the ham, I am obliged her with the book of our regional president and it was a hit. It is hilarious. I won’t show it here but it’s hilarious if you know the company.

Today I made a massive stack of jotters. 72 to be exact. Of course some of them are screw ups but most were good. I’ve listed 1 set to eBay and 2 sets to etsy.

I also finished a notebook for a custom order. I’m working on another custom project as well. So I've had a few busy weeks. Next week should be busy as well. BUT I have a pre-scheduled 3 day weekend coming up and it should be awesome. Well, I'll probably geek out, clean my house and watch all my Tivo'd episodes of the season premieres of the shows I like to watch.

Quick update

UGH! I'm going to be working late all this week. At least it's not so hot I"m sweat my rear off.

Long days.

So a quick update- I'm working on the custom hedgehogs- they look great and are 90% done.

I'm pricing out a custom book. I"ll think about it while stuff loads tomorrow. While that happens I'll hopefully be able to price things out.

After the next 2 weeks I'm going to need a long weekend.

That being said I have my birthday off and my parents are coming to visit- this is exciting on a number of levels- my Dad rarely leaves the state of Maine and he's going to come down to help pick pear off my pear tree and advise me on which branches I should trim- I defer all this to him. As much as would like to pretend I know what I'm doing I might kill it. Then it would be like my fabulous kiwi plants- that I keep forgetting to water and killing, then watering them and bringing it back- it's a vicious cycle. However that means my weekend won't be as relaxing as it could me.

Anyhow, I'm busy but still making art. phew what a week so far.

ebay listings

After 2 weeks off I've got 6 auctions up on eBay right now, one set of coffee jotters, 2 sets of regular recycled jotters, 1 set of 100% recycled jotters, and 2 auctions for the custom jotters.

You can find them all here.

One Shots

So I was on YouTube watching som eThread Bangers episodes and I was thinking that those very same stencil design ideas could be applied to the covers of notebooks. I did a whoel art series a few years ago (okay so more like 9 years ago) of spray pained backgrounds, stencils and what not on paper, so I KNEW that the ideas in the threadbangers video would work on paper. SO I decided to take what I knew and apply it to a few covers of jotters and make a limited edition series of jotters. Here are the first few- I made 17 total, metallic spray paint, red and black and gray. I pulled a tribal wing flash design off the net and adapted it, a diagram of a heart and adapted that too, through painted up the back grounds, layers of paint, and gessoed covers, and finally embellishing with some snazzy stitching here are my results:






I decided to test the limits of my sewing machine too, I've added several extra pages- I went from 48 to 60! Yikes! I also went high end with the paper, some have 24lb 25% cotton and some have 100% cotton paper and some have hand stitchin. I'll have a few up on eBay later today and some on etsy too.

retirement for jotter

Its time for the notebook that I’ve been using for the last month or so to be retired. I have a particular process that I use each time.

First I reread the entire notebook, I then flag pages that need transferring to the new book. Either it’s information I’m still working on or something I know I’ll be looking for on a regular basis. I have 3 pages that I transfer to the first 3 pages of every notebook- a list of my friend’s phone numbers and volume and weight conversion info. So then I start transferring the info as needed. AS I transfer the pages I remove the post it notes.

When I’m all done I put a label on the spine of the old book- labeling what category it goes into- planner, ideas or what not. I also put a date range on the spine. The book then gets tossed into my bag for another week or two just incase I missed something in the transfer. After that it goes into my slipcase for easy reference.

changes

So I’ve taken more time off from binding than I had expected. I needed some time to relax, think about the direction of my website, what I wanted for my website, what I wanted with my art, and realistically look at what and where I was willing to go with it.

I’m really good at retail. I do a great job with it, but that doesn’t meant hat I want to spend all my free time selling journals and supplies that I have nothing to do with other than to order them. I have less free time now than ever and I don’t want to spend that time dealing with retail issues while I’m at home. While I want to create a great website with all those fine journals that I love; I don’t want to spend time ordering, filling orders etc. I see a huge opportunity out there for someone who has the time and energy to create a website fulfilling those needs for people. I think also I was going into it for the wrong reasons- I saw it as a way out of the world of retail hell and it was simply a different level of that hell for me. I think that if I were in a different place financially I would be able to make it work. I just wasn’t able to take out another loan and take a chance that it was going to pay off or not. That being said, when I am financially bale to make this work, I’ll be on top of it in a heartbeat.

So, what I will be doing is focusing on the last of the stock that I have, keeping a few hard to find journaling items- the pencil sharpeners, pencils etc… The main focus is now for me to concentrate on my bookbinding. I’ll have three areas of that: the leather premium journals, the recycled premium journals and the 100% recycled journals. Obviously the 3 lines are going to appeal to different people but I like all of them and that’s what I’m interested in making, so that’s where I’m going to go.

So over the next 2 weeks I’m going to focus on revamping the website, photographing some books, and resetting the crappy paypal shopping cart system. So I’ll set myself up with a schedule and then work on things according to that. I’ve already ripped down the links to moleskine, ciak, and all the other stuff I wanted to carry but didn’t. So We’ll see how things look and go. Hopefully it will be back to basics and better.

Visiting my family was a 2-fold activity. Partially to unwind and partially to see all the awls and cradles my brother is making in person.

I’ve got to say that it’s pretty impressive to see 22 awls lined up, coated glossy with polyurethane, and ready to be sold. My brother has skills in woodworking that I would kill for, he has a certain mastery of the tools that I’ll never have. Something of taking woodshop while young and a proximity of tools that lends one skill you can’t learn later in life. In short the boy can turn wood into useful things, a skill I wish I had.

That being said the awls are Black walnut and maple laminated together and hand turned, each one is a little different, and thus he must take pictures of them, each one. Which he hasn’t done yet. When he does get pictured of them, we’ll list them up on my etsy and his etsy and ebay. He’s asking $12.99 each for them.

I’ll take some pictures of mine. I chose one with a medium flair on the top and a few grooves along the side. It feels really nice in my hands and I can see now how much of an improvement over mine it will be. Mine may have been easy to make but this one will be far easier to use.

Allen also has a bunch of cradles ready to go, as well as the parts for a few more ready to be put together. I put one up on eBay last night.

I have to go to the DayJob now, it’s what is paying the bills!

These are mostly called for

I had a request for Jotters in a variety of colors. Canson makes their mein-teintes paper in 8.5x11in size, perfect for making jotters. On my way home on Friday I stopped at Charette and bought up a variety of colors, yellows and blues. They have a lot of great colors and I looked online and in some catalogs they carry a mixed color pack that I may have to pick up some time.

I had gone to my local crafts store and bought a package of "card stock" paper for scrap booking. I'm not sure whats going on out there in the scrap booking world but this paper was not cardstock, it was slightly heavy than regular paper, it was probably a 65lb paper rather than a 90lb paper I usually associate with cardstock. It's more cover weight paper for reports. Well it's just this side of useless for my needs. So it will end up as end sheets for hedgehogs and perhaps the pages of some hedgies.

Anyway, rant over, the canson paper was perfect. A nice texture and weight for my covers. I stacked Southworth linen textured 25% cotton, 24lb paper in ivory color wiht the canson and stitched it with the ecru and white thread combination. I dare say the off white thread looks good with all colors of paper, kind of the way Khaki pants look good with most colors of shirts.





I forgot to add these are also small cahier sized- 3.5x5.5 inches, and no pocket in the back.

Little sections out of context.

These books are a gift for the coworker who took enough time out of her busy schedule to rain me for the position that I now have. Needless to say I’m pretty grateful about her spending the time to train me thoroughly without that training I don’t think I would have gotten the job.

I made the gift bag from a sign I scrounged from the recycling bin at work. The covers of these recycled notebooks are also made from the same sign. The inner paper is a heavy weight 28 or 32lb paper with some nice flecks in it.

These signs are MUCH stiffer than the signs I had before. They are made to be viewed from a distance so they look out of focus on the screen but I assure you- they aren’t.




I also found that when I cut these signs up that they can lead to some very. . . interesting imagery. And I may have to make a series of books based on this imagery, because it can be found on all the signs. An explanation, because these signs are big and they have pictures of people on them they have the normal folds and wrinkles associated with facial features. When I cut the face section out to utilize the guy’s smile and eyes, it left a section of his neck, and the fold where his chin met his neck. That fold when cut down to book size looked just like, well a shaved part of the female anatomy. For whatever reason I find this absolutely hilarious. So I may make a groups of “adult” get your mind out of the gutter books even though they aren’t really those parts of the body. The images remind me of the email/spam that went around a few years back of pictures just like that. Little sections of pictures taken out of context.

it's been ages

I’ve been working on this book for what seems like ages, it has been months.

This book has 100 pages of Strathmore drawing paper, printed with lines. It’s 90lb or so and ivory in color. There are 3 hidden pockets within the journal. I’m not telling where they are because that would ruin the surprise. It has my usual flap and strap closure.

The really neat thing about this journal is the spine. Because of the Frankenstein style of this book the pine had special requirements. The franken part doesn’t transect the spine quite in the middle and it’s at an angle. So I had to take that into consideration when sewing the book. What I did was make the two sides of the book alike but not identical. When I design a spine I usually use a ruler and a triangle to be sure that all aspects of the spine are identical and are symmetrical. When I did that with this book it looked stiff and off. So I went to town on this spine freehand and eyeballed all measurements. I think that the small amount of looseness achieved by eyeballing the whole thing made all the difference in the world. The spine now fits perfectly with the rest of the book.

Integrated into the front cover is a PenSlip.

Anyway take a look at the pictures.

2 for a Custom Order

Also finished are 2 of the 3 to 4 books that are for a special order. These small sized journals, 4.25x5.5 inches, have Southworth 24lb, 25% cotton paper that is a flecked tan color; they call it Ivory Granite. I think its tan. They are lined as well. 200 pages stitched up with an alternating long stitch. I made the patterns related; each is the inverse of the other. I stitched one in natural unbleached Irish linen and the other black. I think they turned out pretty sweet.

These are both for a custom order, thus I can’t sell them to anyone but the person ordering them… But I would take orders for something similar.

another verbal post, but read for mole skin

I put the 400 page journal up on etsy today (see link to the right) and I’ll be putting the other on ebay tomorrow.

My coworker J’s husband T works for a local press company and has access to a supply of left over papers. Mostly small amounts f paper left over from printing jobs that company has, so it’s odd papers in small-ish amounts. Shortly before Christmas J slipped me a couple of envelopes of papers. I glanced at them and didn’t really have time to sort them or look at them too closely. I noticed some nice colors and nice heavy paper, enough to make a journal in each shade. Good stuff. Today I took the papers down to the studio to take a closer look and put them away with the rest of the paper. The first envelope contained some of my favorite Strathmore papers in some of my favorite colors. The next envelope had the stiff and thick paper. I pulled the stack out and found a nice stiff card stock, with barely perceptible gray dots all over it; another parchment and then what looked like at first a super thick slick white paper with a texture on the back. When I flipped it over it was black, and had a moleskine texture! I think its mole skin. Essentially it’s a heavy white cardstock with a texture black vinyl coating. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with it but it will be cool to play with. I think that I’ll be playing with it for personal use, as I’m not sure how much my designs would violate copyright.

progress

I didn’t eat all day while I was at work so when I came home I was exhausted and tired Once I had a couple glasses of water and ate (we made a ham dinner, roasted carrots and potatoes and corn) I felt a lot better. I browsed the internet and relaxed for a little bit and then got down to the business of making art.

Essentially I glued up the 4 hedgehogs I stitched up last night and thought about the spine for the hidden pocket journal. I made a sketch and think that it will fit the theme of the journal. I’m toying with one or 2 other ideas before I settle on any one idea.

I also cut and folded the end sheets and pockets for some of the experimental journals that I give every year as gifts. Tomorrow I’ll see if I can get them folded and ready.

I realized that I’m pretty cerebral about my process of making books. I think about the spine design a lot before I ever put my pencil/pen to paper and sketch out ideas. Then I sketch out 2 or 3 ideas and 99% the time the idea I go with is one of those. Occasionally those ideas get morphed as I handle the materials. For instance the idea that I originally had for the hidden pocket journal was an elaborate long stitch with variations of linking along the spine. That was when I was working with the other leather. When I cut the new cover and put the patches on it (franken style) whole new ideas came to mind, once I handled the materials. My original ideas for the hidden pocket were stiff and worked form a different angle than the pockets, thee flow from the materials themselves and work better than my original ideas. Of course my original ideas managed to ‘eff up a rather large chunk of hide but I won’t talk about that now.

Anyway, the FrankenGiantJournal is coming along well. I’m not taking any progress shots because they will give away the secrets of the hidden pockets.

So much, yet no pictures

Last night when I got home from work I took a look at my bench and I couldn't see it. IN the holiday madness and family visiting I had let it get covered in culch. So I spent about an hour clearing it off and cleaning it. The great thing about the varnish is that a quick spray of windex and a wipe it's clean.

I have been on a roll today. I managed to get 3 6x9 covers cut from a new cow hide, 3,4.25x5.5 covers cut, folded paper for all of those and cut a few spines as well. I also made an emergency trip to AC Moore. I had called a couple of print shops in the area to find out about paper and printing. Since my printer only can handle 8.5x14 (legal) sized paper I needed to get someone to print on 11x17. I called around and no one carries nice paper in that size. Seems you can only get cheap 20lb bond paper. Not what this piece calls for. I was clearly ticked off about it and trying to figure out how to get the lines on the paper....

When the idea hit me to print out lines on a full sheet and get them to print it on my paper. I knew the person likes a particular paper and had used it with him before. So I made the trip to AC Moore and bought 2 large pads of the paper and cut the pages I needed down to 11x17. I gave the small local shop a call first and they refused to put my paper through their machine- fair enough, they don't want it gumming up the machine, so I called another place, same deal. SO I called Staples and sure enough, they decided they would do it. So I headed to Staples and they did the printing and the charged me the regular price.

humph

Anyway. have 12 signatures, enough to make 2 books at the proper size with lines on 90lb Strathmore 400 series paper.

I bought a strap cutter on ebay a few weeks ago, and thus far I'd had only frustrations with it the straps I cut with it came out uneven and looking like I used a razor and no ruler, like I tore them off the hide, a mess. Today i figured out how to use it, and now that I'm getting better with it, it may be faster than ruler and razor, but I'm not convinced.

I have a large stack of books waiting to be sewn over the next few days.

In addition to that I did the sewing on a stack of lined hedgehogs.

No wonder I can't sleep I'm on a roll!

red edge

The following pictures are of a special order journal. 280 pages of ivory 24lb 25% cotton paper, edges trimmed even and hand colored with red ink. It has a red deer hide bookmark, a rough cut strap and a envelope style flap. The backing paper is a red lama li that was over painted with ink to match the edges. THe spine is a style of cut slots and stations. It's simple but I dummied it up with a few extra stitches here and there.






While it's a simple design the added features make it individual. I really like the red edge of the journal and I wonder what it would look like if I were to do it with other colors. I'll have to lay with it at some point.