Its time for the notebook that I’ve been using for the last month or so to be retired. I have a particular process that I use each time.

First I reread the entire notebook, I then flag pages that need transferring to the new book. Either it’s information I’m still working on or something I know I’ll be looking for on a regular basis. I have 3 pages that I transfer to the first 3 pages of every notebook- a list of my friend’s phone numbers and volume and weight conversion info. So then I start transferring the info as needed. AS I transfer the pages I remove the post it notes.

When I’m all done I put a label on the spine of the old book- labeling what category it goes into- planner, ideas or what not. I also put a date range on the spine. The book then gets tossed into my bag for another week or two just incase I missed something in the transfer. After that it goes into my slipcase for easy reference.

When I talk about “marketing” my art I sometimes get funny looks. So I think I should clarify what I’m talking about when I discuss marketing. Marketing to me is anything and everything I do to promote my art and my website. Think about it, you probably got a website to promote your art but what are you doing to make that happen? If your response is doing nothing then I think having a website is a waste of time. If you aren’t investing a little time each week to promote yourself the effort, time and money of having a website or blog about your art is wasted. If all you do is allow Google or other search engines bring traffic to your site you’re not effectively getting the word out about your work. How can I say that? Because I spent the first year of having my website letting it sit there relying upon Google, search engines and eBay sales to bring people into looking at it. I qualified my website and blog’s dismal failure by telling people that it’s only there to show interested customers and collectors what I do.

Well, where the hell were those interested customer’s coming from? There weren’t many! Someone would email me to ask me about my work, usually from a referral from a friend of theirs who had seen my work so I’d send them to my website. That’s how it worked for quite some time. Until I decided to take it into my own hands and figure out how to get more people coming to my website, to my eBay sales and to me for custom work. Thus my blog was born. I was keeping a personal blog that drove a lot of people to my work- I saw the power in my personal blog (sadly Diary-X is dead now) for marketing and getting people to check out my work. So I started the blog about my art.

Here’s rule #1 about the art blog- it’s all about art and the trials and tribulations of being an artist. You will find very little griping about my personal life here, you will find NO complaining about my customers here, nor will you see much complaining about my DayJob unless it pertains directly to my art. I’ve heard a lot of argument about artist’s blogs and what they should or should not contain. Each blog is personal and you should make it yours however you want. But these are my rules and I’m going with it. So I keep my blog art focused. (This comes from my personal preferences in blogs- I like to read about art, how the art was made and the like; I don’t like to read about some one’s dog puking on the carpet, cooking dinner or what grades the kids got. I read other blogs for that sort of personal info.)

Rule #2 about the blog is: promote it. Trade links whenever possible, get featured on websites whenever possible. Provide links in the bottom of your every email address. The signature file of emails is a secret and powerful weapon for artists. At the bottom of every email people get form me- I provide a link to my blog. I have the address to my website on my business cards. Now if someone asks me about my art I tell him or her to check out my blog- they can learn far more about my art and me through it than they ever could have before.

Rule #3 about the blog. Use it. Post regularly. Most blogs have the feature of saving entries (WordPress and Blogger) so that you can publish them later, work on them more or what have you. This is a rule I break a lot. I’ll post 10 entries over a weekend instead of spreading them out across the week. So that’s a change you’ll see instituted on this blog asap.
Marketing shouldn’t be a dirty word for the artist and crafts person- we just need to change our thinking of it form a big corporate idea to think that it’s just thinking about how we’re going to get more people to look and buy our work.

Holy moley it’s freaking HOT here in Mass. I’ve been printing lines on paper and the paper and printed are not liking the humidity.

The printer keeps jamming because the paper keeps curling. So instead of hitting print and walking away par usual, I have to listen for the printer not printing and then come back, fix the darn thing and then go back to what I’m doing.

It’s mildly frustrating. Especially as I have a lot of paper to print- I’ve got a l;arge order lined up and I need to print it now, I’d rather wait but I can’t.

I’ve also worked on my marketing plan over the last few weeks. I’ve got a good outline of what I need to do now I’m just in process of picking out actual actionable items to add to it. I need a good plan to follow otherwise I won’t do much of anything. Essentially the plan involved 4 to 8 hours a week of additional work- over an above work on the website, making books, ebay and etsy. The goal is to get more people reading my blog and interested in my books. The plan utilizes what I already do plus some use of google analytics.

Have I written about how much I’m in love with google analytics? It’s freaking awesome. If you’re an artist trying to learn more about the visitors to your website, blog or other site you can use analytics pretty easily. There are a lot of screens to look at and see: where your customers/readers are coming from, how long they stay, what they look at, where they are from, among a large number of other things. You can also set up specific pages and entries to track. It’s highly customizable and the reports are really useful.

I’ve analyzed (yes I’m a total geek and this is what I partially do for my job) some of the reports to see where I can improve my links, referrals, and length of time spent on my site.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with how much time I spent on the plan today so I congratulated myself with a bottle of Magic Hat Hocus Pocus. I rarely drink these days but occasionally a nice ice cold beer is very nice.

It seems my little matchbook notebook re-design has led to some great interest! I’m pretty excited to say that my stuff is going to be featured on yet another blog!

You’ll be able to read more about it here:
http://craftandfound.com/

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

I’ve got 4 auctions ending Sunday. One each for the following items: PenSlip, Recycled Sign Cover notebook, Hedgehog with Graph Paper, and a hedgehog with cardstock pages.

I’ve got 3 items just listed, a set of 6 jotters, a set of graph paper jotters, and a set of recycled matchbook notebooks.

I’ve got some low buy-it-now prices and I’ve opened up my shipping to offer first class mail rather than just priority mail. I actually added this option after the USPS upped the price on their priority mail shipping but never announced it. I still believe that in most cases priority mail is the best way to go, especially if your ordering multiple items but I thought I’d give people a choice.

I”ll be loading some items up to etsy today as well. I’ve got a load of items on etsy- too many to list but you can see them all here.

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.

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.

So here are some instructions for the matchbook notebooks. I used all recycled materials but you could use whatever you would like. I think they would look particularly attractive with some decorative papers that are available.

For my 2.5×3 inch pad of paper, I used a strip of cardstock that was 2.75 inches wide and 8 inches long. Depending on what you have around you could used longer paper and wider paper.

To start this notebook out. place your stack of paper right side to right side of the cover. Press in your staples. I used a 1/4 inch stack of paper and a heavy duty stapler and 2 staples, You could do this with one staple through the center.

IN the picture above you can clearly see the score marks that allow the cover to fold around and cover the staples. I scored about 1/2 inch up from the staples. I then folded on that score and wrapped the cover around to the back of the notebook.

As you wrap the cover around to the back press it into place. The pressure from your fingers will cause it to crease around the block of paper.

Now flip the stack over. You’ll be looking at the right side of your paper and the inside of your cover, At the top part of your pad, score a line for the cover to fold up and around the block to make the cover. I then scored again 1/4 inch (the thickness of my pad) above that score. Fold the cover up and over your pad. You’ll have a lot of overhang, I folded and glued my overhang to the cover.

Recycled Matchbook Notebooks
Originally uploaded by lessherger.

Matchbook Notebooks. 100% recycled. What more to say?