In regard to notebooks made of sign vinyl for sale, I have a few up on etsy and I usually have them up on eBay as well. You can find them here and here.

(The one I had on eBay just sold, when I get home from the DayJob tonight I’ll put another up.)

Welcome notebookism readers!

I haven’t had much of a chance to write abot my sign vinyl journals, but here I go now, this is a quick post, so feel free to ask more questions and I’ll answer as they come up!

I start with large signs I scavenge from a local store. I asked permission for them and a lady holds them for me. It helps I also work there. However I suspect if you talked to the local manager of a mcdonalds or something you could say your willing to recycle their old signs and they’ll let you have them. Advertising posters are usually good for one season. And they need to get rid of them somewhere and most places have to get rid of the signs and have to pay for removal.

Vinyl takes 100s of years to decompose and when it does break down it becomes some nasty stuff. I won’t go into my recycling philosophy here, but here in the states we need to keep as much out of the landfill as possible.

So I clean the vinyl, they can get nasty. I use spray cleaner and a rag. Wipe it down and scrub anything really nasty off. I then trim off all the folds and rings and cut them down to manageable sizes. Depending on what kind of sign you get, they can be tent sized!

So I then take a template and cut cover sized chunks out of the signs. This dulls the heck out of my rotary cutters. So I switched over to using a box cutter, it works much better.

The inside pockets are also signs, these coated in vinyl. Here again I ask for them, and I get them. I also wipe these down with some spray cleaner and then cut them into smaller manageable pieces. I then cut and fold them to the pocket size and shape and use a sewing machine to stitch them into place.

I use another template to decide the placement of the holes and I then stitch the journals up. I fill them with either Wausau or Xerox paper that onto which I’ve laser printed lines. For stitching I then use hemp or Irish linen.

Sign vinyl is a great material to work with. Sure it’s rough on the tools , but it responds well to a lot of uses, and makes on hell of a tough notebook. The great thing about it is that if you spill coffee on it you can wipe it clean with a damp cloth, just like the car seats of the late 80’s. I have one request, if you (the reader) decide to go ahead and make these please don’t use my exact design especially if your going to make them for sale. Book and journal sales amount to a portion of my income that I’ve come to need, so snagging my design would be bad for me.

my 3 notebooks
Originally uploaded by lessherger.

Same deal as post previous. My 3 daily notebooks, full of ideas and work secrets.

My 3 notebooks
Originally uploaded by lessherger.

I carry these 3 notebooks with me everywhere. The large one is my work notebooks, on the weekends it sits at home. But the other 2 they are always in a man bag of some sort and with me almost everywhere. The top notebooks is a moleskine pockets gridded with a PenSlip in black leather and antiqued brass eyelets. I carries 2 pencils, and it used to carry my Space Pen until someone stole it off my desk.
the second is a hedgehog covered in distressed sheep hide filled with cardstock pages. I use it for ideas and notes about products and possible art. I also sketch out some spine designs in it.

JPG.polaroid
Originally uploaded by chpaquette.

Another great “action shot” of a PenSlip! awesome. It has inspired me to take a few shots of my penslips in “action.”

Everything I have up on eBay ends today. I’ll be loading a few more items up but not many! I’m keeping my eBay items limited. I’ll have the majority of my items up on etsy.

This particular journal:

I would sell as a custom order for around $125. It’s at a super low price right now. Get it while the getting is good!

photograph.polaroid
Originally uploaded by chpaquette.

Check out this artistic rendition of my penslip. 🙂 much better photography than I can dream of.

I wanted to post a link to my on of my first posts about penslips from over a year ago.

Enjoy this oldie but goodie.

I’m not going to go into too much other than to comment on how drama at work can affect creativity.

There was a major dramatic episode at work, that had me as part of the food chain involved. I had to work around issues that are known in the system and not known in the system, and figure out how to work it, all the whilest dealing with my coworkers.

The general air was somewhat stressful and overall irritating, but not unmanageable. Or so I thought.

I had made plans that tonight, during my precious alone time I would head to the studio and work on some of those books I have on the back burner. (Leather and nice paper, I’ll say no more!) Arriving home I found myself exhausted, it was all I could do to drag myself to the kitchen to make a nutritious meal. So here it is just after 8 and I’m ready for bed.

It’s pretty amazing to me how all I wanted to do when I came home was unwind, drink a nice cold beer, and go to bed. This after a full and restful sleep last night!

I’m going to let this one stand on it’s own it doesn’t need a lot of fluff to tell yo much about it.
The basics:
6×9 inches, 400 100% cotton pages, black irish linen thread, a simple yet elegant and interesting linked long stitch. Chocolate butter soft deer hide, chunky mango paper inside the covers.

It’s on eBay here.