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.

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.

some graffiti jotter pics

How it's Done

I’m going to post some pictures of this a little later, but I’m writing out my process for my moleskine paintings.

I start with a photo from the AP or another website. I print it off fairly small. I then take a pen and outline the major areas of dark and light. Anywhere I see a shape of different shade I hit it with the pen. I scan this in and open it up in photoshop. I edit some of the darks and lights and make sure my lines are all visible in black and white. I use a little find edge filtering and really highlight the lines I made on the print off. Then I save it as a black and white jpeg. In the photo wizard I open up the image and go to print. I pick 4x6 print, which enlarges and distorts the image a little more. After printing it off. I cover the backside with a even coating of soft graphite pencil- usually a 4 or 5B- SOFT is best.

I tape the image down to the page in the moleskine and trace my lines with a hard pencil 4H, or a ball point pen.

After transferring the image. I start with my blacks and lay those in. I work progressively through the shade until I get to white. I’ve been told I should work in reverse and maybe I will one day but I find that when I try and change up the painting style it screws me up and I end up making the painting messy.

After I finish the face I lay in the background. Depending on how much soak through I have from previous pages I decide on watercolor or gouache for the background. Lately it’s been all watercolor no matter what.

After all that I let it dry and close up the book.

The Finishing touches

To make your coffee bag jotter can be finished easily now that you've prepared and cleaned your bag. Start by lightly ironing the mylar, use a very light setting on you iron and cover the mylar with paper to protect your iron.

Too hot and you mylar bag will curl. Be careful.

I like to stitch down the flap with a zig zag stitch but you could use any decorative or straight stitch- or not stitch it at all.

Here you can see where I've stitched down the flap. Now you want to trim all the edges and make your piece of mylar square- it's easier to work with this way.


Flip the bag over and measure out the size of your notebook with a sharpie. I'm making a small pocket sized notebook here, so I've measured 5.5 inches down from the top. Trim the mylar to the right size.
Measure the size of your front cover plus 1/4 of an inch- so for my notebook I've measure 3.75 inches in and 'scored" a line with a pencil. Measure the same for your back cover and score again with you r pencil. Fold along the back cover score and fold any remaining mylar to create a flap.
After you've created your flap cut an angle to allow for creating a pocket.
After you've folded and cut your flap stitch the flap down again.
Stack the cover with 15 sheets of paper and use binder clips to hold it in place. You should just be able to see the score mark you made originally.


If you use a sewing machine stitch down that score mark using a wide straight stitch. If you don't have a sewing machine you can punch 15 holes and stitch through them to make your notebook.

Fold along the stitches press hard, use a bone folder to really crease the fold.


Hold the covers tight to the paper and gently hit the spine with a hammer, sharp hits but not pounding hits.
Line a ruler up witht eh back cover and trim away the excess uneven paper.


Here's the finished book. If you don't like how the cover sits, run your iron over it. If the mylar is too flimsy feeling you can raise the temp of the iron and laminate the cover to the first page.

Toner

I'm pretty excited abou this- my newer printer allows me to make toner transfers! This is awesome in so many ways. My old Oki wouldn't work with toner transfer techniques, the new Brother does.

So many possibilities.

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.

Flickr Mosaic

In celebration of getting a Flickr PRO account I've made this with fd's flickr toys:


My creation
Originally uploaded by lessherger.

1. Stack of 17, 2. Coffee Bag Jotters, 3. Coffee Bag Jotters, 4. Jotter Cahier Volant Slipcase, 5. Recycled Matchbook Notebooks, 6. My 3 notebooks, 7. mine all mine in macro, 8. chase, imprint and mole, 9. Hedgehogs

Coffee Jotters

If you know me personally you know tht I love coffee. I love almost all forms of coffee but my favorite is fresh locally roasted coffee. There is really nothing like it. It’s a flavor sensation unlike any other coffee. Once you’ve had a really good fresh roasted coffee you can’t go back to folgers or other commercially available ground coffees.

My recent excursions into locally roasted coffee have led me to several new brands. One is not really a new brand it belongs to the coffee shop I walk to in my town called Atomic Coffee. The roast and brew their coffee on the premises and in the front room of their shop you can see the roaster. Coffee is fairly priced and damn good, plus they offer free WiFi.

Recently they have started to sell their coffee in limited amounts in some local stores. I saw a bag recently and had to buy it. Wonderful, even better at home than in the store. Truly awesome. If you are ever in Beverly Mass, I suggest you get over to Atomic and have some coffee and buy a bag to take home.

Then a recent excursion had me run into a brand called Karma Coffee. Silver foil bag and an elephant on the label. I was told by the guy selling it (Dan) that it’s a small roaster and coffee shop in Weston Mass. They roast in small batches and sell a lot of coffee. I was game so I bought myself a bag of Ethiopian Harrrar I can’t compare it to the stuff in the shop but if it’s half as good as the stuff I brewed at home that it’s got to be amazing stuff.

At this point you have got to be asking yourself what this has to do with bookbinding.

Patience!

I took one look at the bags and I wondered how I could make that into a book. Seriously I almost always think about how I can make something into a book. A coworker pointed out a sign- made of thick 1/8th inch plastic and asked if I could somehow make that into a book. I said of course I can.

So I cleaned the bag out- some spray cleaner really helped. (a quick I noticed item here- the locally roasted bags had far fewer oils on the inside of the bag than a non-local fresh roast bag that I also tried this with, and thus were far easier to clean.)

I then cut the vacuum valve off, and trimmed the bag to a useable piece. I then stitched it just like I would a regular jotter. I then trimmed it all down to the right size.

On a recycling note, most coffee bags are made of mylar and layered with plastic. They are not very recyclable. While I wasn’t able to re-use and upcycle ALL the bag I was able to get a lot of the bag into a new use. I’m pretty happy with it.

These are all mine, and not for sale.

An Ode to Jotter's and a slip case

I’ve wanted to write a post about my favorite notebook of all time: the Jotter. I used the dimensions of the Moleskine Cahier and adapted it to work for me. I eschew the pocket in the back, use only 48 pages (depending on thickness), don’t perforate any pages and use whatever cover material strikes my fancy. They are easy to make either by hand or with a sewing machine. They are also super durable.

Where my other notebooks are pretty and contain a lot of my ideas my Jotters are my filter and my workhorse. Almost everything goes into these little beauties first, and then gets translated to my larger books. This is the spot my rough ideas for posts start, quick sketches for product ideas with brief descriptions, notes for work, grocery lists and yes, my to do lists.

They are a containment device, an idea capture, a funnel and a filter all in one. Because they are so easy for me to make I have no qualms about crossing out entire pages, filling up the pages with UPCs from work, or jotting down my hair brained schemes or funny quotes from friends. At this point everyone I know is accustomed to my whipping out my note book at a moments notice to take a note, jot down a phone number or copy down a to do list.

Theoretically they could be tossed out after I’m done with them but I can’t bear to part with them. There is so much RAW information contained within that I decided to keep them all. I used to have them in a rather untidy stack on the edge of my desk. (Who knows when I’m going to need to refer to mortgage information, or refer to my raw website plans to see if they translated well.) I knocked the stack over a few time and figured I could build myself something to store them all, so I did. I made myself a little decorative slipcase. Using binder’s board I built 4 sides and a base just tall enough to fit the jotters snuggly. It holds about a dozen, give or take what I’ve shoved inside. Now the notebooks sit on my shelf proudly, contained and within easy reach.

I’ve organized them oldest to the left and most recent to the right. I have 2 I refer to on a regular basis- the one for recipes and the one for quotes. When I finish a notebook I get out the label maker and apply to the thin spine a label of what is in it and it’s date range. I keep an assortment of new notebooks in the slipcase to keep everything square and looking neat. This way I can also pull out a new one whenever I need it.

As for the jotters, about a month into being stored and carried in my back hip pocket they get a little curved and a little beaten up. The paper along the spine gets a little worn but the sewing stays true. I’ve abused several of them, as have my friends and coworkers and man do they stay strong.

I set them up much the same way I used to set up my Volants- I apply a series of post it flags in the front, a small stack of post its and a mini 1/8 binder clip for anything that I might want to cart around but not glue into the pages. I carry an assortment of business cards (mine and others), coupons and little snippets in the back. I”ve given up on the PigPog style organization with my new job. I don’t need to have anything that structured, the new job is structured enough. But I DO organize it thusly: work info starts on the back page and goes forward, while all other information starts at the front. My current to do list and shopping list gets a little post it tab and the rest of the book is a catchall. Far more useful this way for my current position than the other styles I’ve tried in the past.

Giant Hedgehogs!

I've been playing around with making hedgehogs in larger sizes fo awhile now, I make them in a VERY limited amount because I don't like the size as much as I like the smaller size. After all its all about making what I like. Occasionally I'll make something with other people in mind, but I conciously believe that my work turns out better not only when I believe it but when I like it. If I don't like it, they they don't turn out good at all.

Anyhow here are the 2 giant hedgehogs I made. I'll be listing them soon!

I'm melting

I’ve spent the majority of the day working on books and gluing up spines. I finished 3 small notebooks, with cardstock pages and place markers. 2 of the 3 have leather covers, flap and strap and the other is covered in recycled sign vinyl in pink.

I also spent a lot of time sewing up some hedgehogs. I did a bunch of them in card stock and a few with the new graph paper. It took a lot to make a regular thickness hedgehog, I think it was something like 250 pages! (Just checked 256!) That’s just a lot of paper. I’m used to cutting and folding about 160 to 180 pages for a hedgehog. This paper is SO thin. It’s nice though.

Tomorrow I’ll be gluing up the spines and putting them all in covers.

I also got some more recycled covers ready to go, so I folded up a bunch of paper for them. I’m going to print lined paper tomorrow morning and get that ready for Sunday.

Hopefully tomorrow will not be as freaking hot here in the North East as it was today. Luckily for me my studio is in the basement and that stayed pretty cool all day, but it is warmer than it was. This heat is crazy!

PIcs of the new journals tomorrow AM too.

chocolate covered cotton

I'm going to let this one stand on it's own it doesn't need a lot of fluff to tell yo much about it.
The basics:
6x9 inches, 400 100% cotton pages, black irish linen thread, a simple yet elegant and interesting linked long stitch. Chocolate butter soft deer hide, chunky mango paper inside the covers.

It's on eBay here.

future planning

So next week I plan on reintroducing myself to eBay. I’ve got a few smaller journals and a few sets of jotters to auction off, as well as a few other items. Sunday I’ll post the listings and they’ll be active for a week, as per usual.

I spoke with my brother about making me new buttons, he sounds a lot happier now that he’s got a job and new friends who have similar interests. He’s got some plans for a web comic, and once he gets it set up I’ll post some links, even though its not the sort of things I’m interested in, he is my brother.

So I’ve firmed up about 50% of the “new” website and now I just need to wait on the buttons from my brother. Or course I also need to think about what I want for buttons and how I want to present the new set up. But all the old pages are down already and the new set up is starting to emerge from the ashes. I’m pretty excited.

I’ve also been making books again. A few hedgehogs, some jotters and getting paper ready for other endeavors. I also printed out my own copy of Walden, which I found at B&N for $8, minus my 10% discount…. Grgh. My copy will be an heirloom. I also found a copy of The Jungle for less than $10! (Given my recent reading of The Ominivore’s Dilemma it’s right in line with my reading interests right now.) However I’m going tolook online and see if I can get a copy used.

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.

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.

Hard Workin' Bro'

MY brother has been hard at work. He's made a few more cradles and some more awls. He's got them on his etsy site and I've listed one of each on eBay.

YOu can find the awl here.

And the cradle here.

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!

layyyzahhh

One of the many reasons I love the laser printer and initially the reason that we got one is that I use it to print lines for journals. I don't do lined journals often, usually at request for a custom order. Since I may or may not whole sale the recycled journals I bought 3 reams of Wausau paper in cream. I thought I might make a few journal with lines.

Being myself I couldn't just print 2 or 3 journals worth of lined pages. No, being me, I had to print a full ream of paper, 500 pages. It takes a long time to print 500 pages of lines. I've been chipping away at it all evening.

I also found that the printer didn't like printing essentially 1000 sheets in one day.

From now on I vow to print fewer sheets per day. Besides printing 1000 sheets is boring.

Also if I can urge anyone to get a laser printer- even a black and white one I would do so. They are just as fast as an ink jet now, but the amount of sheets you get out of one cartridge is crazy, usually they rate the cartridges for 500 sheets less than what they will actually do. My cartridges are rated for 2500 sheets, but usually I get 3000+ out of them. The other fantastic thing with them is that they never clog up. THey are virtually maintenance free. Go laser you'll be happier.