Category Archives: Journaling

Review: Exacompta Plain Journal

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I was given the Exacompta plain (unruled) journal to review by Karen and Stephanie of Exaclaire,the US distributor for Clairfontaine and a variety of other French stationary products. I like to put journals through a few paces before I do a review and since it took me a full year to get through my last journal, it’s been awhile.

The paper is off white, a very nice cream color that I really like a lot. The paper is laid textured on one side and much smoother on the other side. For some this would be a detraction, personally I like it very much and feel it opens the journal up for a variety of media I wouldn’t normally consider. Dry media does much better than expected- things like charcoal and soft pencil really like that laid texture. Though it is textured fountain pens love it’s surface.

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Wet media also does admirably on this paper. I was pleasantly surprised when I soaked the paper down with water and color that it held up. It didn’t just hold up, it out performed the luxury of the Rhodia Webnotebook. When it dried the wrinkles (cockles) relaxed. While the paper is not perfectly smooth it’s less cockled than I’d have expected. I was able to lay down a nice wash of watercolor on BOTH sides of the page and have not one drop show through or soak through to the reverse side. That is pretty amazing.

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Even my wettest writing pens don’t soak through. Occasionally you can see dark colors through the pages, but that is the case with most any journal. I’ve painted pages with ink and it doesn’t soak through to the reverse side, which again, is pretty amazing. I haven’t been interested in doing any collage in this but I’m sure it would take to it well.

In summary:
100 Laid Textured Ivory pages 100gsm
5.5×8.5 inches
Ribbon Marker
Soft Covers with a fabric spine, meant to go inside a leather cover, many companies make them
Price $15.50 at gouletpens.com

It handles wet media like a champ and is wonderful for a fountain pen. Pencil does amazing textural things on the textured side but doesn’t smudge as much as would be expected on the smooth side.

Exacompta 1
Exacompta 2

It’s not cheap but it’s a better value than the moleskine sketchbook, it’s got more papges that behave better and respond better. I’d rate this 2 happy thumbs up and would recomend it to anyone looking to get a nice journal that they can write in, sketch ink, test watercolors in, and abuse.

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observations on making videos

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I’ve been messing around with my video camera, my iPoo, and the boom mic stands that I use to hold them. I picked up a couple of official iPoo* tripod holders and for less than $5 each they are a little better than my clamp method, and cheaper, but don’t have that kludge** factor. They are a little less strong/ sturdy than my holder, but I can see how they can easily be made a lot stronger, so should I need to, I can adapt them.

I took an evening and a 1 minute clip and decided to figure out the RIGHT settings to manage quality, speed of render, speed of upload(aka file size) for videos I plan on uploading to YouTube with my software. At one point I got super frustrated with the included help and the official online help and delved into google. Go figure, I should have done that in the beginning. I found a helpful YouTube channel explaining which settings to use to get rid of the letterboxing (don’t use the obvious settings, duh!) Rendering is still not at the speed of my iPoo but it does do a much higher quality video AND I can do longer videos plus I can use a variety of different music, do a voice over if I want, and add effects.

I found some music to use with my videos as well, stuff I haven’t heard a million times before and fits my style. I’m really happy with that. I need to put it on my iPoo so I can use it consistently across the board. I am trying to stay away from stuff that has copyright or isn't made for use.

I’m trying to keep my videos to particular lengths- sketching or drawing videos with no instructional content are under 3 minutes, Q&A videos are under 5, instructional videos can go as long as they need to go. i’m considering some review videos on favorite products.

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Fountain Pens and Inks I use

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Dave asked me on YouTube to link up my favorite fountain pens. So here’s a list:

Kaweco Sport– I like it for it’s ability to fit discreetly in a pocket and be converted to an eyedropper. (at jetpens)

Platinum Preppy– for $3 it’s a workhorse, it comes in an array of colors and can be converted to an eye dropper. (at jetpens)

Lamy– To get this to convert to an eye dropper you need to find a clear tube to fit inside the case or find a matching roller ball. Even then you need to epoxy the vents. In my opinion it’s worth the hassle you can get interchangeable nibs and expand your nib size for not a lot of money. (at jetpens)

TWSBI– the most expensive of my pens, it lays down a smooth even line and its a joy to sketch or write with. (not available at jetpens)

Pilot Parallel– These come in a range of sizes and I think act more like a paint brush than a pen. I have a 6mm size and it lays down an awesome swath of ink. (not available at jetpens)

Inks:

Private Reserve– I enjoy their shades of blue. (not available at jetpens)

Diamine– I enjoy their chocolate brown shade. It’s deep it’s dark it’s really nice. (at jetpens)

I hope this list, though not exhaustive helps out make some choices about what fountain pens to start out with and if they are for you.

Please note that I am not compensated for linking to these particular sellers, I link to them because I’m a happy customer who has recieved nothing but top notch service from both sellers. I’m happy to steer people in their direction.

Flickr Find Friday: FakeGlue

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Another journal page that resonates with my style of journaling: Collage, sketch then add a dash of color. LOVE IT. When I add the ephemera from my daily life to myjournal I'm recording my events not the events of some big company churning out what they THINK I may want to record. Nah, that ticket fromt he raffle I didn't win records the dissapointment of loosing.

Anyway FakeGlue does a great job of that with this spread.

 

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Technique-I-can’t-wait-until Tuesday: Mini Polaroids with the Pogo

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I was over here reading Crafty Moira’s site and I stumbled upon her tutorials, this one caught my eye– pogo printer yes, making it look like an old school mini Polaroid, why yes thank you very much.

After checking it out, I realized it would be cool to have the pogo print the square image and then simply trim off the excess. (read, I'm too lazy to go get my white cardstock.) After some trial and error I figured some stuff out.

First. Don’t work the actual 2×3 inches of the print, you’ll get a grainy print. You need to work larger than the print size so the pogo can compress it down, or something like that. I chose to work in GIMP (a free photoshop clone that kicks butt) with a “canvas” size of 4×6 inches, which is the same aspect ratio as the pogo print, which is 2×3 inches.

Then I opened a photo, I cropped it square and then cut and pasted it to my 4×6 blank “canvas.” It was over sized, I then selected “resize layer” and resized the image to 3.375 inches square. This will give you a 1/8th of an inch border around the sides of your image, and about 1 inch at the bottom. After this you have to flatten the image and then save it as a jpeg. Now send it to your pogo.

When it prints you’ll notice several things. First the pogo has a hard time with square edges, the top edge of my images are all just a hair off square. I don't mind this, but if you do you may wish to go with Moira's original instructions. The second thing you’ll notice is that the bottom part of the image is really long. You’ll need to trim the bottom so that it is ½ an inch high or so that the whole thing is 2 3/8ths tall. Trim with a ruler and an exacto and voila! You have a mini Polaroid, from a Polaroid Pogo. Sawweet.

In Journal Revolution there are instructions on how to make a Polaroid mat from cardstock for a perfect polaroid full sized image. It looks awesome too.

Some tips for printing you want the image to be at 300dpi, if you let the program autoselect 75 or 150 dpi the resulting print will be pretty grainy. I’m pretty sure it has to do with how the pogo processes the images to its format. In any case the higher the DPI the better the pogo print will be. Also be sure that you save it as a jpeg, if you don’t the pogo will not print it at all, its little lights will blink at you, you might get frustrated because you don't understand it's blinking light, unplug it and then turn it on and off*.

So as I was doing this I realized that I could really add any color to the back ground. I remember Polaroid did some neutral gray and black bordered polaroids at one point, but what’s to stop me from making the background any color I want? Or what if I wanted to add some text to that little area below the photo? Or what if I tweak the image in GIMP to create a pinhole effect?

There are so many alternatives to this that it’s crazy.

Here are a few of the images I made, ready to go for anyone's pogo.

Arcadepogo
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Arcadepogo
If you don't have a pogo you could create your blank canvas as 4×5 inches and then scale it to the "correct" Polaroid size of 3.5×4.25 inches. Then you can print it on any printer or load it to a thumb drive and take it to CVS/Walgreens/Walmart/or anyother store with photo printing. (Walgreens has a service where you can load a bunch of photos to a website, place them on an 8×10 sheet of photo paper, and then print the whole thing for a couple of dollars. All you have to do is pick them up at the store in a few hours, they will ship to you for a few dollars.)

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Technique Tuesday: Golden’s Tar Gel for Cult of Stuff

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This week’s Technique Tuesday is an additive. I’m combining TT with the Cult of Stuff workshop on AJ ning. My choice of stuff to experiment with was Golden’s Tar Gel. It’s an additive that you mix with a liquid paint to get stringy lines that stay raised, think of Jackson Pollock, and you have the right idea.

I’d read that Tar Gel takes forever to dry, I don’t like my art journal to be out of commission for that long, so I grabbed a board and did one of my automatic continuous line drawings on it in sharpie. I’d had paper and thread glued to this board previously so there is a lumpy bumpy texture already in place.

I filed in the face portion of the drawing first with warm colors then added a flat dark blue background. To this I added the strings, bloops, blobs, drips, drizzles and splots. I mixed a good amount of color with the medum, so that it was thin and runny. I then loaded up my palette knife and dribbled away. It was fun to try and control the medium, as it really had a mind of its own. Sometimes large blobs would run off the knife, sometimes thin streams.

The interesting thing with this medium is that the drips and dribbles stay raised. I tried the heat gun on them but it raised air bubbles and the medium did not seem to like it at all. So I’ve put a fan on it to attempt to dry it faster. Hopefully tomorrow it’ll be dry enough that I can hang it and get some decent pictures.

 

 

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