I made a few BIG jotters last night. They measure about 8×11 inches have 52 sheets of Wausau Ivory 24lb acid free paper and are hand stitched. I made 3 sets of 3. They will be up on etsy asap. Some have black nylon thread and some have black nylon and red linen thread. I also bought a new tool to make them, a leather sewing awl. The needle is a little coarse for my liking so I’ll have to make it a little more fine and work better.

HEre are some pics:

Made in a similar  way as my small jotters but bigger.

So I took a look at this website a papersource craft and was inspired to make my own.
Here’s theirs:

I haven’t taken pics yet but I took a small priority mailer, cut the sealed end off, made 2 scor marks in the center 10 cm from the edge and the trimmed excess 10 more cm from the scores and then trimmed a flap, slipped in 2 hedgies and away we go. Simple, can be reproduced easily with better materials and is strong. It hold 2 hedgies in a variety of ways and with a couple of velcro dots would be wonderful. I’ll get some pics of mine up a little later.

What can you make with an old envelope or 2?

I was reading an article about work capacity. It’s a physics
concept that I haven’t thought much about since I was in high school but it’s
one of those great concepts that really can apply to so much more than just
physics. The article that I was reading was about working out and being able to
more than the next person when you need to but I was thinking how can I apply
that concept to art, because really it doesn’t matter too much to me if I can’t
relate it to art.

So I got to thinking what can I do to increase my work (art)
capacity. I came up with 4 items to do so. For the next 4 weeks I’m going to
post a new work(art) capacity item.

Here’s #1: Get regular sleep.

This might sound like a no brainer or if your like me and a
night owl, not a morning person and able to stay up late something you want to
do that but lets talk about regular sleep. I could quote any number of studies
that prove that getting regular sleep is better for your creative and work
brain but I’m going to go with my observations: the work I do lat at night and
when I’m tired isn’t as good. The quality isn’t there. It’s sloppy. Sloppy work
creates more work later. Eliminate the tiredness that creates the sloppy work
and you eliminate the extra work that is created by the sloppy work. Not
getting enough sleep is a vicious circle because you feel like your getting
more done and maybe that first night you are, but what about the next night and
the next until finally Saturday rolls around and you’re so sleep deprived you
sleep until noon. How much time are you loosing to not sleeping by getting in
that extra hour every night when you waste 5 hours by sleeping in on Saturday?

I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever stay up late and get a
little extra work done but keep in mind that sometimes when your well rested
the next morning or afternoon your going to get more work done in the long run.

These are simple examples of things I do to increase
my work capacity so I can make more books.

Next Week: #2 Compartmentalize.