I loaded these 2 journals up to ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6964933641
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6964933289

I finished them a couple of days ago.

They are these 2:

I finished these up tonight. 3 journals. 2 distressed and one cocoa brown leather. All with long stitching and some decorative X’s along the spine. You can’t see it on the cocoa brown book, but trust me, its there, along with a faux endband.

So yeah, I’m exausted. I’m going to bed.

So this is also one of the last pieces of deer hide i have left. I’m kind of sad to see it gone, but it was all nice.

This journal was the journal of mistakes. First I managed to punch the stations before cutting the pages to the correct size- in this case they only needed to be 5.25 inches high, rather than 5.5 inches. So first I did that dumbness. Then I cut only on one side, so I had to go back after sewing in 3 of the signatures and trim the other side, so I had to cut signatures away
from the spine. ACK!!!!

Then while shooting the pictures I managed to loosen a nut too far and drop a greased bolt into my hand. Not realizing I had grease on my thumb I picked the journal up. Only noticing AFTER i shot the pic that i had gotten grease on the journal. Because it’s hot the grease was nearly liquid and has absorbed into the leather. sadly there is no fixing this. So I’ll put it up on eBay at a reduced cost. I spent so much time on this one only to screw it up beyond repair.

I swear this heat had adled my brain.

This is one of my last pieces of the cocoa brown leather. I backed it with green washi printed with copper paisley. I like this paper too, I’m torn between this and the yellow for my next sketchbook.

This little guy is a distressed leather hide, which was a little darker than those I get now. it’s backed with bright yellow japanese washi paper printed with a same color cloud over print. It’s only visible in certain light. i’m quite enamoured with the iner paper and plan on using it on my next journal.

This journal is smooth black sheep hide, backed with orange and gold marbled paper. the spine is a long stitch sewn to slots and then decorative X’s are sewn up the spine.

I have to saythat this journalis inspired by the White Stripes. i was listening to an interview of them on NPR and while I’ve always enjoyed their grungey rock, i have to say that after listening to them, Ifound them quite interesting. that being said, I of course cue’d them up to listen and listened to them while designing a bunch of spines.

This is a long post so bear with me.

These are 3 covers with my templates temporarily glued down (leho 2 way glue baby, the best.) I measure the template on the covers so they work with the cover.

Here I have a stack of 10 signatures to go with this cover.

I take the middle sheet from the last signature. I measure it against the template, I eyeball it because I find that works best in the finished book. Measuring it with a ruler can make it static and too stiff. I like an organic feel.

These two pictures are of me marking the lines fromt he template to the folded sheet that will be come my jig and thus mark all the signatures.

These 3 pictures are of the finished jig. After I mark all the stations on the jig I fold it back along the orginal fold, so that the marks are now on the inside of the fold. After that I punch the holes with my handy-dany home made awl. (A wodden dowel cut to my hand size, smoothedand rounded to comfort. A leather needle had the eye cut off and a small drill was used to drill a hol in the end of the dowel. I then glued it in place with gorilla glue.)

Here’s my finsihed jig. I’ve dropped it onto the top of 3 sets of signatures stacked one on top of each other in my sewing cradle, also home made!

I then punch all the stations. Repeat until I’m done with all the signatures for this book.

Heres the finished stack of signatures, most are right on, except forthe one I punched while taking a picture, but even that is clsoe enough that it won’t change the showing.

For me this method works best. I’ve cut my stations, I’ve measured each one. I’ve created mini jigs, etc. . But this has been the best for me. It’s also similar to what Keith Shith describes in one of his books. He uses a smaller jig, while I prefer to use an actual sheet from my book. Though I must say that when I work with images or words I make a jig that is seperate. It protects the pages from unintentional damage from the awl and dirty fingers.

Today was a productive day. I made 4 micro mini journals as you can see in my previous entries. I’ll be listing those on eBay.

I also managed to finish 2 travel-sized journals. One in distressed leather and the other in a cocoa brown leather. It’s one of the last cocoa brown leather covers I have left, so there won’t be many more of them. I’m trying to create a bit of a back stock in the journals for eBay, but it’s getting hard with the day job. Now that I screwed up and have to count inventory every other week it’s going to throw me off even more than I am now. I do plan on leaving early tomorrow, after my 11-hour shift yesterday I need to get out and work on things here. Today was really quite great. I left, having done a 7-hour shift and managed to get a lot done here. I did it all while watching TV.

So I’ve listed a bunch of things up on eBay, links are here:

Distressed Leather
Cocoa Brown Leather
Distressed Leather MIcro Mini Journal
Smooth Black Leather