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.

ebay listings

It’s been a long week for me here. I’ve been working extremely hard at the DayJob which has left me still little time to work on books. It will pass soon. We’re hiring for the missing person and all should be better after that.

PHEW!

However I’m listing some of my backstock items to eBay, you can see them here.

I’ve got 2 sets of 6 jotters, 2 one off graffiti jotters and a large hedgehog journal covered in marbled brown leather- it’s awesome.

I’ve also started to rededicate myself toward making art. I’m focusing on working in my moleskine with gouache and painting things out of the news. I should say people from the news.

I’m getting half as much done on books as normal and it’s frustrating me. I’m almost done with a hedgehog project that I started weeks ago only to find that I’ve not gotten it done… I’m like 2 steps from finishing it… GRGH, silly mortage, why do I need to pay you? Kidding.

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.

A little Planning Goes a Long Way

So I wanted to write about my DayJob a bit here and how it’s affected my ability to spend time on internet and art things.

Obviously the DayJob is important to me, I’ve learned a lot of useful skills from them, some of which I’ve applied here online and some that are universal- like when to shut my mouth. I worked 50 hours this week. Yup, 10 hours of sweet overtime. But it’s left me with less energy when I finally arrive home. Keep in mind that now I’m in the new location I drive about 1 to 2 hours per day for travel completely dependent on traffic. So my days are sometimes 12 hours long. Obviously that’s a lot of time, and I’m left exhausted on some days.

So I’ve had to carefully plan out my days when I come home from the DayJob- cook dinner and lunch for the next day, eat and pack it up. Then I clean up. I relax for about a half hour reading my email then I head to the studio for about an hour. Because I only have an hour I have to pick and chose what I do carefully. This week it took me 3 days to cut and fold paper for hedgehogs, something that normally I’d have done in 2. In addition to that I worked on the 2 portraits for my boss while I relaxed in front of the TV. Normally the portraits would have been done in 2 days or so.

Because I’ve prepared for the unknown things happening I’ve been able to plan ahead for certain things- like the covers for the hedgehogs have already been cut, so all I need to do is sew them and glue them up. But when unexpected emergencies arise- such as the recent instance with eBay taking down all but one of my listings it throws me for a loop. Thanks to eBay I’m out a possible $50. While not a big deal it is a burden for me, I simply didn’t have the time to relist those auctions, it would have required me to shift my other responsibilities.

I try to prioritize the studio, website and personal items. Obviously blog entries go to the wayside in weeks like these, custom orders that I would normally weave into my time get shifted to top of the pile and get done first and eBay listings are saved for weekends when I have more time. I keep a to do list in the front of my Jotter notebook that lists the items I need to accomplish during that week, I cross them off as I go. In terms of personal items, I’m keeping a shopping list on a post it in my jotter. The rest of the personal stuff is sort of a routine: dinner is made easier by having a lot of pre-packed veggies in the freezer and chicken ready to go, so for nights where I come home ready to sleep- I can throw a chicken breast in the frying pan, a package of green beans and maybe some rice in the rice cooker.

Essentially we plan for this sort of thing with my job- there are often times when an emergency arises- wireless dies, registers stop working or card readers stop working. In those instances I have to stay until it’s fixed. Sometimes I know I’m going to be there for extended periods of time- such as this past week and probably the next couple of weeks- though after this week things should calm down a lot.

I’ve also had to plan for things within my job too. I’ve had to dedicate a page in my planner to planning out important instances with my day. Appointments, interviews I’ve set up, interviews I’m conducting, call back etc. For the first time I’ve had to look at my duties and prioritize them and see what I can accomplish in half my day while shifting my temporary duties (human resources) to the forefront of my day. I spend my AM doing my normal duties while every 2 hours looking at a specific program for my temp responsibilities for a half hour; back and forth until noon. I then shift gears in the afternoon and work solely on the temp responsibilities.

Towards the end of this past week I started to feel more comfortable with the temp responsibilities which has lessened my stress level as well as the time I spent at work. My goal is always to get everything done that I can do in 40 hours. I like my job but my website and art are my real focus in life.

In short a little planning and focus have made my home and internet life run a little more smoothly though I’ve been wishing there were more hours in the day.

oh ebay you fickle thing you

Well, after yesterday I had hoped that my listings were safe but fully expected them to come down. So this morning when I got up I wasn’t sure what to expect. So to check my email and find that 2 of the 3 remaining listings were gone didn’t surprise me, but the randomness of the removal is what gets me. The final listing also had the same string of keywords and was also listed at the same time. So I don’t get it.

I understand that I’m in violation of the rules, but I’ve literally been listing with those same titles for years, with not one peep of rules violation or warning or indication that they were in violation of the rules.

I also removed the word “like” from my listing, replacing it with “better than.” Both of those listings were removed. However, the words “better than” were not on the list.

I sent a note to eBay regarding the matter and apparently you can’t compare your items at all to another in the listing title. So I can’t even include the word moleskine or cahier at all. Even though cahier is French for notebook. So I’m screwed.

I hate ebay even more today than I did yesterday. But I’m between a rock and a hard place. Etsy is great and I’d love to do all my sales through it but I’ve always done the bulk of my sales through eBay. I’ve stuck with it through thick and thin but this may be where I draw the line. I’m carefully weighing my options, and I’ll come out with a plan soon. I wish this could have happened on a different week, I’m working crazy hours at my DayJob and I’m literally coming home to fall exhausted into bed, if I had more time I’d be able to deal with this in a more effective manner and get the listings back up on eBay the next day.

So those of you who are bidding, I’m sorry eBay stinks these days but expect that one last listing to come down tomorrow. I’ve contacted someone at eBay regarding my attempts to edit the title and being unable to do so, and I’m hoping that having made those attempts will get me some slack but I expect not.

(On a side note- I took a look at some of the other listings, and I’ve noticed that they do seem to be cracking down on this across the board. Knockoff bags, shoes etc are all getting taken down too, so I don’t feel so bad, but I’m expecting that for me to come into the radar that some one reported me.)

coffee jotter and finished order

Last night I finished the big order I wrote about in a previous post. I took the book into work with out taking a picture of each of them. So… I’ll snap a quick pic today when I get to work of the spines. Since I can’t show the covers without photoshop anyway, it doesn’t make too much of a difference. I will say the matching bindings in hemp are very cool. The excessive company branding is even cool when you look at how totally random it looks even if it isn’t.

After a week of being used and abused the coffee jotter is standing up VERY well to use. The mylar packaging is showing no signs of wear. The stick-on label is showing slight signs of wear but this is not a surprise. The label is a sticker meant to survive the abuses of a short sweet life on the retail shelf, not the travails of my jeans’ pockets.

written:8/17/07

I never did get a picture of the books but I did get them to the person purchasing them! He was really happy.

Vacation PLans

I’m officially on vacation. I kicked off my vacation with a dinner at a very nice restaurant in a central Mass town near where we used to live. It was very cute and very tasty. Meals were artfully arranged French style but more American fare. It was an expensive kick off to the week but well worth it.

My plans for this week are simple, relaxation in Maine. Heading to a few key scenic areas, making some art and mainly relaxation.

One of the places that I’m heading to is Cape Split in South Addison to see the area John Marin painted. I never understood Marin’s work until I took a wrong turn when looking for an office in which I had an interview and I ended up near Cape Split. It was a brilliant sunny summer day and I had recently seen some of his work in person and was amazed and overwhelmed by seeing suddenly with clarity the scenery in his paintings in person. It was suddenly clear. I could see the shapes in his paintings in the scenery. I guess you have to see it to believe it. I’m hoping for a few clear sunny days while we’re up there so I can get a few good photos in and maybe even some painting. The one big issue I have is that while we go to see some of the area it’s going to be some driving and gas up there is pretty expensive.

The other main attraction that we’re going to go see is Cobscook State Park. IT is amazing, particularly if we have a nice day.

The final place to see is West Quoddy Head. It’s an easy day hike, a few miles only, gorgeous rocky scenery that I never got tired of when I was in Maine. It’s a place that is easy to get to and easy to enjoy and take lots of nice touristy photos. It’s also the location of a pretty gruesome attempted murder- about 5 or 6 years ago a man and a woman were getting divorced and she asked him to meet her at the park to discuss a few things. The decided to hike and she pushed him off a 100 foot cliff as the tide was receding. There was only a few feet of water between him and the rocks, and it almost killed him. He was spotted by tourists and barely saved.

Anyway. I’m looking forward tot eh 9 delightful days off I’m going to have. I’ll be posting to Flickr and her from the road, and we aren’t leaving until Sunday night.

Beer and Moleskine'd thoughts and a future 'zine

One of the things I really love in the hot summer is a good cold beer. I don’t drink a lot but damn in the summer a nice cold beer is wonderful. Today it’s HOT here in the northeast and I’m sweating my a$$ off.

I’ve been editing an article I’m writing for both my blog and for a prospective ‘zine. Well, I thought about the couple of beers I have in my ‘fridge and I decided to crack into one. This is a St. Peter’s Golden Ale. It’s the color of apricots and honey. It’s smooth and easy drinking, light and refreshing, perfect for the summer. It also only comes in very expensive 17-ounce containers. It also seems to be quite heavy on the alcohol…

All that stated my article is going darn well. I’ve got 22 half sized (11 letter sized) single spaced pages of good solid starting out online advice as well as hints and tips for marketing art. I’ve been devoting about 2 hours a day to working on it. I spend my evening writing up notes and ideas I’ve jotted down during my various breaks in the day and random ideas I’ve had while waiting for things to load at work. I print the pages out after all that and when I get home from work, edit the pages and fix all the edits I’ve put into the draft. Repeat process. Tomorrow I’m taking a break from the process as I won’t have free time and I’m going out after work.

So Saturday I’ll be working on it again. I’m expecting a 30 or 40 page half sized ‘zine out of this effort, in 2 or 3 weeks. I’m very very excited.

Give the Gift Of coffee Jotters- Congrats Peter!

One of my coworkers has been promoted; he’s headed off to work with a subsidiary of the company I work for as a traveling coffee guru. I’m unbelievably excited for him. The job entails a great deal of travel in the North East as well as out to Colorado where the subsidiary has its head quarters. How cool is that?

As a farewell and good luck gift to him I’m making him a set of Coffee Jotters made of the packaging of the company employing him. I’ve enlisted the help of several people working in his current department. When they brew coffee for sample they are saving the packaging for me. We’ll see how many packages I get from the weekend but I was able to snag one on Friday and I bought anew package of coffee and made that into a jotter.

These jotters are cool in that I added pockets to the front of each one. One I simply folded the packaging over and stitched it in place before I made the jotter and the other I trimmed the packaging to size and used a piece of the cuttings to make the other pocket. I think they came out really well.

I also did a little experimenting on the mylar. I remembered from high school art class that mylar will tack to itself at a fairly low temperature. One of the packages had a lot of seems that I didn’t want and were too small to trim off the package it would have fallen apart. So I hit it with the iron at a very low temperature, and while it didn’t tack down all the folds and creases in the mylar and plastic disappeared. I didn’t get the results I was looking for I certainly got results that were in the end quite useful. (Cautionary note: When I say low heat, I mean as LOW as my iron would go.) Oh so in the end I ended up simply zigzag stitching over the offending seams. I like the look.

So here are a few pictures of the Coffee Jotters.

I see now I forgot to remove a logo, but we'll all have to deal with it.

DayJob Sales

One of my coworkers is heading off on vacation, which is pretty typical this time of year what’s not typical is that he has seen some of my work and placed a custom order. He’s getting 5 large recycled journals, 8 matchbook notebooks and a set of jotters. Not to forget the notebook he’s getting for himself. One of the main requests was that I include as many company logos on them as possible, as they are going to his former coworkers. I was more than happy to do that for him. The results are some highly company branded books. I’m finished with almost all of them except for one, his. I’m hoping to get some shots of the finished work tonight and post some highly photoshopped pictures.

Also my DayJob boss bought a large 400-page journal for her best friend who was recently married. I don’t usually like to sell books at work, but I figured what the heck, it’s a one shot deal. It’s always cool to see the reaction of a person who first gets the journal. I never get to see that, because the journals almost always go off into the mail. I’ve gotten to see the reaction twice now. It’s one thing when I make them for someone but another when they purchase them from me- the reaction is similar but so very cool. Anyway, the big smile on my Bosses’ face made my day. I can only imagine how excited her friend is going to be when she sees the giant behemoth of a journal for the first time.

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.

Returned

Apparently just the right amount of griping about stolen property inflicts just enough guilt to bring it back, my space pen appeared on my desk overnight. I won't ask questions I'll just be happy I have it back, and I won't ever leave it on my desk when I step away.

Lesson learned!

Ebay and Etsy- regarding Sign Vinyl Notebooks

In regard to notebooks made of sign vinyl for sale, I have a few up on etsy and I usually have them up on eBay as well. You can find them here and here.

(The one I had on eBay just sold, when I get home from the DayJob tonight I'll put another up.)

Final Post of the night- Work Drama

I'm not going to go into too much other than to comment on how drama at work can affect creativity.

There was a major dramatic episode at work, that had me as part of the food chain involved. I had to work around issues that are known in the system and not known in the system, and figure out how to work it, all the whilest dealing with my coworkers.

The general air was somewhat stressful and overall irritating, but not unmanageable. Or so I thought.

I had made plans that tonight, during my precious alone time I would head to the studio and work on some of those books I have on the back burner. (Leather and nice paper, I'll say no more!) Arriving home I found myself exhausted, it was all I could do to drag myself to the kitchen to make a nutritious meal. So here it is just after 8 and I'm ready for bed.

It's pretty amazing to me how all I wanted to do when I came home was unwind, drink a nice cold beer, and go to bed. This after a full and restful sleep last night!

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.

Taking Some Time Off

I'm taking the next 2 weeks off from listing things on eBay and I'll leave my current etsy items up but won't be adding anything new for a few weeks.

I'm also leaving the etsy items on sale!

Why you might ask? May and June are popular months for graduations, and as such we have been invited to a graduation party every weekend for the next month and a half. Yes my significant other has a large family.

In other news I've been spending some time in my garden and it's coming along nicely. I havea ton of sprouts and they are looking great. Now if I could just keep the neighbors cat from using my garden as a litter box I'd be a lot happier.

neglect

I apologize for neglecting this blog. I decided to take a few days off from making books and work on my household chores. I’ve also been dealing with massive allergies. It’s been wonderful and miserable!

Summer is getting into full swing here, my yard is bright and green, lilies are poking their heads above the surface of the ground and my pear tree is in blossom. This is one of my favorite times of year- temps are perfect for being outside and sleeping is comfortable. Light spring breezes pas through the house and everything is sunny and great.

My brother is making more cradles and presses. I have a cradle and an awl on eBay ready to go. The press goes up tomorrow.

Anyway. I’m going to take it easy with books over the next few weeks and plant my garden.

Ending Tomorrow

Well the sun has come out here in the North East and tomorrow I"ll be enjoying the warm sun and all 60 degrees of fantastic weather.

So I'll point out right now that I have 2 items ending tomorrow and 4 more ending Sunday. Tomorrows auctions are for journals/notebooks and Sundays ending auctions include a sewing cradle, an awl and journals. Everything is at super low bids right now and several items have no bids. So this is a chance to get some of my work at lower prices. Ebay here and Etsy here.

Also I think it bears mentioning that I have a sale on ALL of my items on etsy (you can see the pricing in the entry below.) I need to make room for more items that I'll be making over the summer and fall. So take a look there are lots of jotters and recycled as well as a few hedge hogs.

I've been at work the last few evenings as well. I've folded up several bundles of hedgehog pages, both in large and small sizes and I've also managed to sew up a bunch of them. Tomorrow I'll be gluing several of the blocks up.

I'm also making some notebooks for work. I'm on a local product team and I'm making some journals for the people on that team. They will all be recycled. I'll post a few pics when I get the project finished.

pictures soon

Phew it’s been quite the week. I’ve been unbelievably ill but in a way that makes me feel like a wimp for saying that I’m sick. What does that mean? I’ve had a nasty stomach flu that has been going around, I’ll leave it at that- you don’t want details. That being the case I’ve not done much in the way of listing things to eBay, until this weekend. I’ll also be updating my etsy site as well.

I’ve been working on a stack of book blocks and various book projects. I sadly had to turn down an order because of the size of the paper, they wanted a hedgehog 400 pages long but filled with heavy larger paper that I just don’t have access to. It’s a long convoluted story that I find frustrating. IN this case even iof I had bought the paper cutter I so desperately desire I would not be able to cut the paper to their desired size- yes it was that large. Anyway.

I also have been avoiding having my taxes done. Doing my taxes fills me with an anxiety I can’t quite describe, ever since I had to pay taxes into the state of Maine I’ve hated doing my taxes. So last year I went to H&R block to have mine done and it was much better, this year I did the same and I’m happy to say that I’m getting a wonderful return. Next year I will remember that as long as I have everything all together it only takes a half hour for them to enter everything in and it will not be bad and that I do not have to avoid it.

I had to drive into Cambridge 2 days in a row for the DayJob, I’ll tell you that I will avoid that if at all possible in the future. Morning traffic into the city is terrible and wears me down.

That being all well and good I”ll do another update with more pictures and details of the books I’ve listed.

whole sale

I haven’t had a chance to post about it because I’ve been too busy with work, but I’ve been working on books. And wow books. I’ve made a ton of recycled covered books over the last few weeks, 24 to be exact. I landed some very cool signs from the store and I’ve managed to cut some nice covers from them.

I also made a stack of covers ahead of time. Half of them are lined and half are unlined. I’m pretty happy with the results. Now I’m just figuring out the aspect of money.

I’m having a hard time with it. I’m not sure why, but I am. I know the retail price of them but I’m not sure about it. I might re-price them. I’m so familiar with how the company does it’s pricing that I can’t step away from it. I want to give the people who would carry the books a fair price and make my money but I also want an item that will sell.

I’m looking for any ideas of pricing and wholesale info out there. Anyone have any good ideas or recommendations about heading into this?