Author Archives: leslie

UStream Monday: Midori Traveler Knock-off Supply List

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I’ll be streaming this live on my Ustream channel Monday 1/10/11 at 6pm EST.

If you want to follow along here are the materials:

  • A 9x12inch piece of 4 ounce or heavier leather.  Don’t get upholstery leather unless you want to back it.
  • Ruler
  • Hole Punch or Awl
  • Exacto or Click Knife
  • Hammer
  • Eyelets and setting tool (not absolutely necessary
  • Thin elastic cord- 2 pieces one 33 inches and one 12 inches
  • Sharpie for marking where to cut.

You’ll need to cut a 9×12 inch piece of leather. If you have a leather shop in your area most likely they can cut a chunk for you. You can also look for heavier leather on eBay. I’ve seen a few sellers on there selling exactly the kind of leather you’ll need for this. Try looking for latigo leather or Leather 4 oz. You’ll find something. You can also contact a shop and see if they will cut a piece to size for you.

Find the center of each long side. We’ll be punching a hole at the top and bottom of the piece as well as a hole in the very middle of the leather. Then 2 more holes 1/8th of an inch from the first hole. Then one to lace through.  This will make sense in the video.

After that we’ll use a few eyelets to support the holes and then thread the cord through the holes.

The 9×12 size is perfect for a moleskine cahier in the 6×9 size or my handmade jotters. I’ve also successfully carried the manuscript for my book stapled in a corner, folded in half then threaded under the elastic. Protects and holds it all together. It holds 3 elastics to hold notebooks.

Now keep in mind I’ve never seen a midori traveler in person, this is my version of their product from looking at online images. I use it primarily to hold all the handwritten notes in the various notebooks together in one place as well as my planner. I don’t know how their threading works.

Some ideas to add to this: if one wanted a stiffer back cover, a pocket could be sewn in and a piece of stiff card stuck in it. Backing the leather could add to the stiffness. I like the raw leather I’ve used as I can run acrylic paint into it to get a nice color change. The size of this can be adapted to ANY size notebook. Want one for a pocket sized? Measure the cover size, double then add an inch and a half  to get the long side. For the short side add a half inch. (3×5 would get a 5.5×7.5 cover piece)

Anyway tune into the show tomorrow night, or if you can’t make it watch the video!

See the video here:

 

Weekend Wordy: an end

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Funerals are not easy for anyone involved; family, friends and acquaintances are all grieving in their own manner. I’ve decided that when I go I want to be cremated with a small ceremony for my family and friends. It would be against everything I believe (or don’t) in to have a pastor, reverend or rabbi saying a prayer over my body. I’d like my family and friends to get together in one of my favorite places and have few drinks and tell stories, maybe cry a bit. Then I’d like my family to scatter my ashes over a few of my other favorite places. The headstone can rest at the family farm at the cemetery on the hill.

Going to a funeral should rightly make you realize your own mortality and consider, carefully, how you are leading your own life. On the ride home Christie and I discussed our options. Things straight people take for granted we have to weigh and get a lawyer involved so that our opinions are made clear, legally, for anyone who may question them. Massachusetts has, for now, gay marriage but we have not yet married and should that law fall to the religious right wing we’ll still need to be sure our will and wishes are in order. The prospects of not having all this in order are frightening and clear. I’d have to fight to keep my house, fight to keep our assets and in general do a lot of junk that most people take for granted.

So while my heart is heavy for my friend and her family my mind is racing considering the aspects of what we need to do in case something tragic happens to us. I hope to not have another dear friend cry in my arms and sob the words “I just don’t know what I’m going to do without him/her.”  

Flickr Friday: Eveline Says Daily Don’t Work

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Eveline Says Daily Don't Work
Originally uploaded by Blade21292

 

Jonathan, better known as the artistic biker is doing a daily drawing challenge, he's loading up the pictures daily. You can sign up to get them emailed to you. Read what he has to say here:

My friend Eveline (http://eveline-timeless.blogspot.com/) recently posted the "Daily don't work" for her. Meaning that she does better when she can commit to something at her own pace. I can respect that. However, I'm still going to challenge her, and everyone else to commit to 10 minutes a day doing something creative. For me, I want to improve my drawing skills. I've already started doing 10 Minute Daily Nude Figure Drawings. I won't kick myself if I miss a day, but of course the intent is to do it EVERY DAY.
A daily drawing habit was the very best thing I ever did for myself artwise. It helped me see shapes rather than objects. It help me train my hand to work with my eyes. It challenged me to get creative with the composition to keep it interesting. But, most importantly, it forced me to do something creative EVERY DAY!

So. That's something I would like to give back to you folks. I will be taking pictures of simple objects that you might find anywhere. I will post them here in color and grey-scale for you to use as a reference. They are Creative Commons license, or at least they will be, so use 'em for anything that you aren't selling. If you want to use them in something you're going to sell, please e-mail me to discuss it.
If you would like to share your daily practice, I've created an "invitation only" group over on The Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/groups/artisticbikerchallenge/). If you would like to join the group, all you need do is ask. I just didn't want the ENTIRE flickr community commenting on our posts.

If you would like to have the challenge photos and their responses e-mailed to you, sign up for The Newsletter.

Out of Range

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Sorry for the lack of updates this week. My head has been other places and I could have sworn that some of the updates that I've scheduled for NEXT week were in fact scheduled for this week. Sigh.Additionally I'm very lucky in that Christie has had this week off from school and work. We've been relishing the unusual time together and really enjoying just relaxing after I get home from work. Tonight I was greeted with a nice bottle of red wine and homemade Italian meatballs with sauce made using her Grandmother's recipe. Yum. Right about now I'm read for sleep.

Product reviews start next Thursday and Flickr Finds start Friday. The rest of the week is up in the air in terms of plans. I think that I'll start Technique Tuesday up again. Then I'll try and get the wordy stuff to Wednesday and the weekends. Then If I feel like posting within the week I can continue to do so.

Starting this coming Monday, Jan 10th I'll start up my UStream show again. I'll be working on the Midori Traveler notebook cover knock off. I'll post a supplies list sometime soon.

Updates this weekend might be spotty as it's Christie's last before she heads back to school and I really want to enjoy this time before we're knee deep in stress again. Seriously, this week has been amazing.

Hard Honest Words and a lot of them

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After my post about self doubt I sat down with my notebook and pen and wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote hard honest words and it felt good. Today, I did the same I sat and I wrote more difficult honest words. Reading the false prophet garbage that guy was spewing made me realize I want to take this book to a different place, I want it to have more meaning than “Buy my book and you too can make art full time!” or “Buy my book and make my style of art journal.” That’s not what this is about. It’s about my pitfalls, the dumb shit I’ve done, the dark stuff as well as the bright sunshine of what is good.

The last 2 installments I’ve written, close to another 5000 words, have been about forgiveness and how I’ve given myself permission to forgive and love. It’s funny, some of us walk through life and that’s normal behavior for others of us (me included) we have to learn that forgiveness and love are real and powerful things, they aren’t tools. Well, they are but not in the way I once thought.

As I write this stuff I feel like I’m making it more real, in my head it’s been floating mumbo jumbo, a sort of loose collection of thoughts and beliefs. Things I’ve written about in my journals and felt too self conscious to share. Now I’m writing it down, still self conscious, but I think I’m sharing this more for me than for the potential readers. Writing this has been as healing as it was when I first had the half baked thoughts way back when. I’m sure not all of my thoughts are new, but they are about as real as it gets. My words are honest and raw. Some of it is hard to put to paper, and will be hard to transcribe to the computer. I’m dedicated to it.

 

 

Happy New Year, have some self doubt

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I read a lot, maybe not the stuff I should read like more Jeanette Winterson and other good novels, but stuff like the recent blog posts by various and assorted entrepreneurial types. You know the guys that say things like “I make a six figure income, and let me teach you how. You can do it if you buy my book for only 2 payments of $29.99!” I get sucked in by the “Rah! Rah! Rah!” tone of their blogs and the implied chant of “You can dooooo it!”

I end up printing a copy of what they claim is their most recent book, but its really a 30 page introduction to their book that ends with 5 pages of why I should buy their book. The entire 30 page diatribe is about what the book will contain. Things like I will learn “How to find out if your passion can make ends meet” and “How to be a career changer.” The text is invariably filled with buzzwords stolen from other entrepreneurial writers, most who are many times better than the one who’s text I’m currently reading. Additionally they will mention, repeatedly that you can “leverage social media to do your marketing.” Throughout the whole thing I groan at the schlocky writing, the Rah! Rah! Rah! tone, the blatant theft of other people’s ideas, and the insane over use of buzzwords.

Yet I read along, because YES! I want to leave my DayJob, and if this guy who can’t edit his own writing (15 pages with 10 typos, not to mention the glaring errors in grammar) and lifts ideas from others can do it, well, damn it, so can I!

It also brings to the forefront of my mind that as I sit here and tap away on my keyboard traps that I do not want to fall into in my book. I don’t want that Rah! Rah! Rah! tone in my book nor do I want to seem to shout “You can dooooo it!”  Shit, I’m still half way there. I still have my DayJob, the closer I get to asking for that sabbatical the more frightened I get of not having a tether to reality, a paycheck, and health insurance.

I think that what these entrepreneurial books (if you can even call a 30 page pdf a book) lack is that real sense of fear. I feel like I’m leaving a blood trail for the next predator to come along; and pretty soon the bank will take my house, Nissan will come after my car, and the state will fine me for not having health insurance. While none of these are likely to come to pass, the fact remains that these are the worries that I have, and I’m sure they are the worries that others have as well. I’m not going to tell you that these are worries I’m able to squash down, these live in the forefront of my mind, constant nagging and painful.

In my mind I also have a choir of people singing, “You can’t make this work.” “You will fail.” “You will be miserable.” That’s real folks. That’s the reality of what is going on in my head. I worry, it’s what we type A personalities do.  Add to that the unknown of job prospects for my significant other and well, it’s a recipe for anxiety.

With all that being said there is a lot of positive going on too. I’ve got a lot of ideas for classes, things to do with AJ Ning, we’re working hard on the zine; and then I’ve got this whole book idea. I’ve got all this positive going on and the chorus still goes on in my head and my inner critic still tells me that I suck.

The whole point of this emo post is that I hope that I keep the book real, add parts where I write about my crushing self doubt, my appalling lack of clarity, and my inability to move forward. All that is what is real, not just the “Rah! Rah! Rah!” and the “You can dooooo it!”

Wordy Wednesday: Creative Commons; with attribution, non-commercial

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In my world, copyright's purpose is to encourage the widest participation in culture that we can manage – that is, it should be a system that encourages the most diverse set of creators, creating the most diverse set of works, to reach the most diverse audiences as is practical.- cory doctorow

The above quote got me thinking about copyright, people stealing my designs, and the wide open world of the internet. Last weekend, most of you may have missed it, as I failed to announce it, I opened my entire flickr stream up to Creative Commons(CC), Attribution, non-Commercial. I had the setting previously to All Rights Reserved. I read this article with the above quote this AM, about a week after making the decision to go creative commons with my photos. I've also made the difficult decision to set my blog, back to the first entry on blogspot to the same creative commons as the flickr set.

This has been something I've been mulling over for months. I see the internet and thus my blog and photos as communication. I've always seen the important part of them is as a tool of communication. By setting my flickr to "all rights reserved" I forced people to ask permission before blogging one of my photos, or worse yet, forcing them to make the choice between asking permission and just not blogging one of my images. Over the last year I've seen how foolhardy that is, first hand.

Over the last year I've featured a lot of artists here on my blog from flickr. I've been forced into the same choice I've forced people into- ask permission or not blog. I'm ashamed to say, I've made the choice to NOT blog more times than I can count. I started out with the whole idea of the feature from flickr to showcase some of the work that makes my heart pitter patter, things that bring both enjoyment and inspiration into my life. When you go "all rights reserved" the viewer entranced with your image is forced to ask you permission to post your images. Flickr takes away the easy access. I'm forced to go from the awe and inspiration phase into thinking about business before I hit "post." Instead I hit "send flickr mail" and type up a quick email asking permission. More often than not I get no response. So after sending several hundred "Hey can I post your pic?" emails I quit.

I quit because a blogger asking an artist's permission to use their art- with attribution and a link back to the original image with a paragraph about WHY the blogger loved the image wasn't enough to get a response from most people. I have my flickr mail set up to send me an email. I can read the email and decide if I want to respond with a yes or no. I'm willing to bet from the utter lack of response I've gotten when I asked permission that most people don't have that set up. Or people just didn't care about getting their work posted on someone's blog.(Even with hundreds of readers a day!)

The real question is why would any artist want to shut down an avenue for more people to hear about and see their work? The more eyes on your work= the more potential sales. The more people talk= the more sales. To me allowing people to easily blog my images is a win-win situation. They write about my work and people see it= win. If someone wanted to use my images to illustrate a blog post, they can easily do that, all they need to do is link back to either my blog or the original image in flickr. Again, I see this as a winning situation.

Recently one of my favorite artists went from easy access sharing to no access. I was looking through her flickr stream and found a whole host of images I was considering posting with a week devoted to her work. When I went to set up the posts, I was shut down. I was no longer able to use the flickr "post to blog" option, nor was I able to use the "embed image" option. The artist had shut down all options to share her work with others. I was and remain baffled. This is an artist who has had several shows of her work and is well establish and until 3 weeks ago, allowed open sharing of her images, with attribution as long as there was attribution, which I had always given. I have to wonder why someone would do something like that.

On one of Hazel Dooney's recent FB updates I wrote that I felt people should have more access to artists and their work. CC is one way to do that.

Of course, there are always people who are going to steal your stuff. It's the nature of people, the internet, and commerce. Like it or not we're in a commercial business (like it or not art, writing, and images are commodities) and we have a choice- let people steal or take control of our commodities and sell to people what people steal from us. I, for one, am tired of people stealing my designs. So, I will continue to make and design my stuff but I'm going to open a lot of it up to the CC and see what happens. Make anything I create for yourself but start to sell and we'll see what happens. This isn't tricky legal territory. You can read all about the CC here and educate yourself in it, it's less complicated than you think. It also puts the screws to the people who would take your hard work and rip you off.

I tweeted that I was frustrated that people had essentially stolen my pen slip design and were offing the product at a premium price. I'll be honest it's frustrating to use my creativity and come up with an idea that is immediately ripped off. Eventually I gave up on making the pen slips I'd been handcrafting in my basement, individually with care and attention to each one. I gave up becuase I felt I couldn't compete. I see now exactly how misguided I was by giving up. People will always buy the original from the original. There lies my big mistake. Should I start up on production again, it won't seem like I'm the original, no I'll seem like a copy cat, though I've got images in my flickr pool dating to way back in 2006. Giving up was the worst idea I've ever had. I've been kicking myself about it every day.

When I realized that I was doing the exact same thing I hated on flickr, I knew I had something to fix. I looked through flickr and figured out how to make the change and made the best CC licensing choice for me. Should you want to use one of my images in a commercial manner, email me. We can talk, but if you want to feature me on your blog, that's easy, now! Use the flickr share option and share away!

Art Habit part 1

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I’m making a commitment to write more. Partially so my writing gets better but also because I’m working on a book. I’ve mentioned Art Habit once or twice before but this is my first public commitment to making it work. InkyGirl.com has 3 challenges on her blog, one of them is a challenge to write 500 words a day. When I’m focused on writing I can easily churn out 1500 words in an evening. When I’m not focused I write nothing. Goal setting is supposed to be good for success so I’m setting a 500 words  a day goal. Will I keep it? Who knows. I hope so. I suspect it’ll be an easy goal as 500 words is just a few paragraphs and about a decent blog post.

I can never keep to NaNoWriMo as it’s the busiest month of the year in my retail job. I’ve signed up nearly every year and failed every year. This year was no exception. I started and I’ve got about 10 to 15,000 words of Art Habit written. I’ve got another 10,000 or so stewing in my head and in various manners in various journals and I’ve given myself a commitment that in 2011 I WILL finish Art Habit. It WILL go into publication in 2012. That is my commitment to myself. This is something I’ve been working on for years, it’s been stewing in the back of my mind since 1998. Every year I’ve given up on it, put it further and further to the back of my mind and told myself that it can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t happen.

This is the effing year I MAKE it happen. This is the year I’m taking a sabbatical from my DayJob, working on an art show, a book, my blog and all the stuff that is important to me.

So let me tell you a little bit about Art Habit. It’s about making and keeping an Art Habit, how I’ve managed the screw up my Art Habit over the years, how I’ve shot myself in the foot, repeatedly year after year, and how I finally found my niche, my place and the ability to keep my Art Habit alive and strong. It’s my story, with some questions in there for the journaler and artist. It’s an exploration and I’m inviting you along to see what has worked and what hasn’t worked. It’s poignant and heartfelt. I’m going to let it all hang out and see what happens. Honesty is good. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the story.

I plan on sharing excerpts as I write here on my blog, I invite you to share with me, in the comments, your thoughts, feelings and stories. I invite you to share with your friends my words via your blog. I want you to muse on my writing in your journal. This is a personal journey I’m sharing but I’m inviting you along.

I can tell 2011 is going to be a spectacular year.

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