I wrote earlier that Allen, my brother, had made a bunch of awls for bookbinding, but that he hadn’t taken pictures of them yet. Well, he took many pictures today and loaded them up to his Photobucket account- you can see them ehre BookWorks Photo Album I’m pretty happy with how mine turned out.

The sewing cradle is listed on eBay here and it has a low Buy it now. They’ve been selling pretty well.

I’ve got a load of lined paper (see previous post) and I’m going to fold some signatures tonight. Sometimes even when I don’t have time to make books its good to get in the groove and just do something linked to binding. So I’m going to veg in front of the TV and fold paper.

I can’t wait for things to totally even out at my DayJob so that I can devote some real time to binding. As of right now it’s blowing my mind how much there is too learn. I did bind myself a fat recycled notebook so that I can take notes as often as I would like. It’s come in pretty handy, especially with the pockets- I’ve stuffed those full of things. I also love how I can spill coffee all over it (my thermos leaked one afternoon and my book was covered in the last dregs of my coffee- sugary mess.) and then just wipe it clean with some spray on cleaner. (Method multi-surface for me.)

Anyway, time to veg.

Visiting my family was a 2-fold activity. Partially to unwind and partially to see all the awls and cradles my brother is making in person.

I’ve got to say that it’s pretty impressive to see 22 awls lined up, coated glossy with polyurethane, and ready to be sold. My brother has skills in woodworking that I would kill for, he has a certain mastery of the tools that I’ll never have. Something of taking woodshop while young and a proximity of tools that lends one skill you can’t learn later in life. In short the boy can turn wood into useful things, a skill I wish I had.

That being said the awls are Black walnut and maple laminated together and hand turned, each one is a little different, and thus he must take pictures of them, each one. Which he hasn’t done yet. When he does get pictured of them, we’ll list them up on my etsy and his etsy and ebay. He’s asking $12.99 each for them.

I’ll take some pictures of mine. I chose one with a medium flair on the top and a few grooves along the side. It feels really nice in my hands and I can see now how much of an improvement over mine it will be. Mine may have been easy to make but this one will be far easier to use.

Allen also has a bunch of cradles ready to go, as well as the parts for a few more ready to be put together. I put one up on eBay last night.

I have to go to the DayJob now, it’s what is paying the bills!

I’m in Maine visiting my family. Its significantly coder here than it is in Mass. But it’s nice.

I have several items ending on Bay tomorrow. Several recycled covered notebooks, jotters and a hedgehog. You can see them here.

I made a custom hedgehog for someone, pics below. The pictures aren’t very special but filled the inside with 100% cotton paper. I so used a different method for gluing it up than I normally us. I clamped the block with binder clips applied thick glue, removed the clamps and then pressed it until it dried. It made a very good binding. The spine is no thicker than the rest of the book block- binding perfection. It heads for England.

One of the many reasons I love the laser printer and initially the reason that we got one is that I use it to print lines for journals. I don’t do lined journals often, usually at request for a custom order. Since I may or may not whole sale the recycled journals I bought 3 reams of Wausau paper in cream. I thought I might make a few journal with lines.

Being myself I couldn’t just print 2 or 3 journals worth of lined pages. No, being me, I had to print a full ream of paper, 500 pages. It takes a long time to print 500 pages of lines. I’ve been chipping away at it all evening.

I also found that the printer didn’t like printing essentially 1000 sheets in one day.

From now on I vow to print fewer sheets per day. Besides printing 1000 sheets is boring.

Also if I can urge anyone to get a laser printer- even a black and white one I would do so. They are just as fast as an ink jet now, but the amount of sheets you get out of one cartridge is crazy, usually they rate the cartridges for 500 sheets less than what they will actually do. My cartridges are rated for 2500 sheets, but usually I get 3000+ out of them. The other fantastic thing with them is that they never clog up. THey are virtually maintenance free. Go laser you’ll be happier.

Another thing that has been taking up a lot of my time is that my DayJob boss has offered to sell my recycled books in the store. In the past I’ve avoided wholesaling my work partially because I always get almost what I want for my books on eBay or etsy, I’ve had no reason to sell them wholesale. I also had a very high end product, or so I think. My books are an artistic extension of myself. That being said the recycled notebooks are as well, but less so. I love the experimentation with the material and the interesting nature of the material. I also love that it fits in with my recycling and ecological perspective of life- there is nothing more fulfilling than helping save the planer, in my own little way. It’s great to take signs that would have otherwise been destined for the landfill and turn them into something else entirely.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to determine what I should charge as a wholesale price and in what quantity.

Ultimately this comes down to a business decision, I know that doing this can expand my local visibility, which leads to larger online business. It’s also a way for me to unload a large quantity of books all at once, which leads to a large amount of income, all at once.

Whew I realize that it’s been awhile since I’ve done a substantial post. It’s been a whirlwind few weeks in my life.

With my new job, it’s regular but there is so much going on. I must keep my head a float. Don’t think I’m saying it’s bad; it’s very nice to use my brain, a lot. This week is the first that I’ve had where everything has been going along just fine. And I must say that it’s freaking fantastic. Of course this is only Monday and everything could go to hell faster than it took me to type all that.

So the DayJob has hit an even keel and with that my regular hours are just fantastic. I work regular hours all week and then get my weekend off, which leaves me to make books all weekend. Because I’ve worked retail for so long I’m always shocked at having 2 days off in a row, it’s like having a mini vacation every week. Because the rest of my week run s long I end up leaving work an hour or two early every week. And that means that I get to have what seems like an extra long weekend almost every week.

That means I get to make a lot of books and list a lot of items.

I’ve been experimenting a lot too. Which also makes me very happy.

The sign vinyl has been fun to mess around with. I’ve come up with all sorts of things to make with it and it’s all pretty cool.

I think the coolest thing has been the penslips. I think that making them out of the vinyl is a natural progression of materials. I have a bunch of them up on eBay and I’ll be making more of them as time goes on. I love the randomness of the images and colors.

I’ve done a load of listing Items today! I’ve got 7 items up and I’ll have an 8th up shortly. HEre they are:

sewing cradle:
Another of Allen’s sewing cradles. I included a lower buy it now. This one with show up on eBay around 8pm PST. Around 5pm my time.

Distressed hedgehog
Distressed hedgehog This one with linen textured white paper. I don’t do white paper often, but I have ton of it int he studio, so I thougth I’d use a bunch of it.

Blue Recycled:
Another blue covered recycled journal. This one is light blue with some dark blue areas. Heavy hemp cord to sew it.

Red and Green recycled:
A different sign a different texture the texture on this is smooth. I’ve been noticing a difference in the signs that are meant to be hung inside VS outside . Most of the store hang the exterior signs inside but the signs that are meant to be hung INSIDE are smoother vinyl. They are also a little lighter weight. Anyway, the colors of this vinyl are cool. I love the burgundy with teh sap green. I used hemp cord to sew this.

recycled jotters:
Smooth vinyl meant to be hung inside. Almost 100% recycled, the only virgin material in these is the thread used to sew it. the covered are sign vinyl and hte interior ir reused paper, destined for the recycle bin.

Blue Jotters:
Covered in canson mein-teintes paperand filled with strathmore ivory linen paper, these closely resemble the moleskine cahiers just with a better color. These beg to be decorated. 2 different colors of blue in one auction.

Bright Blue Jotters:
Covered in canson mein-teintes paperand filled with strathmore ivory linen paper, these closely resemble the moleskine cahiers just with a better color. Bright blue for when you want to visually seek your notebook.

PenSlip:
I’ve been making the penslips out of leather for awhile I figured I might try and make them out of vinyl. The result? A fantastic Penslip that is secure and tight around a pen or pencil. I love it.

I’ve got 2 auctions ending on eBay today, one is for a small pocket sized recycled journal, made of a cardstock sign coated with vinyl and filled with paper printed on one side with advertising. It is here and looks like this:

The other is a hedgehog filled with ivory paper and has a fantastic leather cover, soft and smooth. The bidding is super low- only at $7 this AM and I’ve never had a hedgehog go so low. It’s here:

These pictures are an example of the recycled journals that I made with old vinyl signs and vinyl coated paper signs. The cover is vinyl and the pockets inside are the coated paper signs. The pockets formed by sewing the coated paper signs stiffen the covers a lot which is needed since the vinyl is quite soft and flexible.

One of the things I noticed when I cut the signs is that inside the signs to strengthen them there are fibers, thin strands of thread. I also notice they become more prevalent as I’ve been ising one of these signs notebooks at work. Use of the book frays more of the thread from within the covers. I’ve hit them with a lighter to melt the threads back into the cover itself, and that seems to do the trick.

These are filled with 24lb Xerox brand paper in ivory. Which looks more like a very light tan to me. Each book has 4 signatures of 10 sheets for a total of 160 pages.

I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.

As I’m sure many of you know the Northeast was hammered with a Nor’ Easter last night. In my area, coastal northern Massachusetts was dumped on with about a foot of snow, white hell as I call it. Before it switched over to rain I went outside and shoveled. I’m glad we decided to do that, because the same height of snow is out there now but I can see the water seeping out into the shoveled areas, and that means it’s going to be damn heavy. I’m not sure what the offical count for the snow is but I dare say we got about a foot of it.

I’m about to go out and further scape the white crap from my driveway and end of the driveway before it freezes into a dirty gray hump.

Because of the snow and rain last night we stayed in, turned up the heat, watched Casino Royale and I made some books. (Side note, CR was the darkest grittiest Bond movie yet and I loved it. I agree with much of the critics that Craig was an excellent bond, that the darkness finally matches the tone of the books and this was a great bond film. I did miss Q though.)

I played around with making the recycled covers with pockets. I made a few of them and they came out quite well, I’m pretty happy with it. I also worked on the sewing machine and have it set to work properly. I need to find a good website that explains everything there is to know about sewing machines.

I’ll take some pictures when I’m done shoveling.