I have a journal ending on eBay today. IT’s 400 page monster ofa journal in deep dark chocolate and blue marble paper. it’s here:
400pages of paper 1 years worth of journaling

I have a similar journal on Etsy for $100 and have sold other journals like it for upwards of $125.

As many of you know I have what i call a DayJob that I us to support my art habit and pay my bills. It also provides me with health, dental and vision as well as a few other fringe benefits. While I hope that someday I can support myself on Art (which is the reason behind expanding the website but that’s a whole other entry.) I know tat it’s not an expectation that I can have for a few more years/decades.

My DayJob is in something that I like to refer to as Retail Hell for a major organic grocery store, or as my friends and I refer to it as: The Hippy Grocery Store. I won’t go into specifics since they have made blogging about them a major offense,i.e. one that could get me fired, but I’ll tell you a little bit about what I do there. I’m a little better off than the average Wage Slave as I’m the manager of my department, the floral department. This means that I am able to make the schedule of the department, order all the flowers, and take all the heat when I don’t make my profit margin or something goes wrong. Unlike most grocery and retail businesses the model that the Hippy Grocery Store takes is that the managers of the department work hand in ha with the lowest paid employee on the sales floor, and are expected to do as much hard physical work if not more than that lowly paid member of the team.

The philosophy behind this is that you eventually know the business so well that it is hard to fail. If you handle your product every work day you end up knowing exactly what you need to order. You also get to know your customers and staff. Who can you rely to buy which product, who can you rely on every day to deal with every issue that arises.

Anyway, I digress, that was not why I started to write this, there are many things I can say about HGS but this isn’t the place. I started to write this to describe the reality of retail the 2 days before Christmas and encourage people to plan ahead. It’s hell, if you think that you can wait until 2 days before a holiday and find exactly what you want en you go to the store, think again, and please don’t yell t the lady in floral when you CAN’T find it. It’s not my fault that you waited until 24 hours before the holiday to do your shopping, there is noting I can do.

Nor should you think that you can drive anywhere safely the 2 days before the holiday. I tell you this: people are crazy those last 2 days before the holiday and road rage is rampant. I saw a normally pleasant 90year old man drive laps around the parking lot, blowing his horn at anyone who got in his way. It was painful to watch as the parking lot was full and busy.

So next year plan ahead, make some eBay, etsy or web purchases and stay off the roads, it’s all a lot easier if all you have to do is walk to your mail box!

Well, I thought I was all set with my Tax ID number and things like that, but, it seems that the grand state of MASS wants to force me into many regulations and rules that I must follow. So I must fill out paperwork otherwise I’ll be fined. I did find a great resource- SCORE, a groups of retired and semi-retired persons who counsel people who are starting new businesses. I emailed a woman in Cali, who was a great help in helping me to figure out what I have to sign up for and what forms I MUST fill out. So if there are other entrepreneurial artists out there I highly suggest that you head over to SCORE to either speak with or email one of their professionals, it will help to sort you out.

I spent last night working on my business plan. It’s an odd thing as an artist to write. In the past I just made books, with no thought to the financial end of things, I just made it. Now I’m thinking in terms of how am I going to make a profit with everything I do I find it a hard way to think about art and my process, but I suppose its good for me to think about it, especially if I want to quit the DayJob and have the website support me. It’s not a totally alien thought process for me, as do that with my DayJob, every day is about the product coming in and the product going out as well as directing the people that I work with to maximize that profit.

So for the next few days I probably won’t post often as I’ll be at the Day Job for inhumane hours. But I do have 3 days off next week and I’ll make up for the lack of posts with some great journal videos and lots of pictures!

I just posted this 400page monster to eBay:

It’s 400 pages of southworth 24lb ivory laid paper with 25% cotton, acid free of course. The spine is a pattern I created for a single spine that I enlarged for a larger spine, I think it worked quite well.

I’m very excited to say that I figured out how to imprint the cover of a moleskine as well as any of my journals.

I had figured it o previously but I also purchased a chase to hold the type.

If one were doing this on a small scale one could do what I did the first time and scotch tape the letters together.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I have a set 20pt century gothic BOLD Letter Press type. I had hoped a year or 2 ago that I would buy a small Kelsey press and use that n combination with type to print card and what not. IN theory it was a good idea, only the small vintage presses I like are very over priced and I need to play with a good one t figure out how to fix a broken one and a broken one was all I could afford. Needless to say, I bought a heap of items with which to print, quions, keys and type. Which I have up until now never had chance to use.

To imprint the cover of a mole without a chase- simply select your letters, arrange them, mirror image, and then use tape to hold them together. After that you can then whack the backside with a hammer or apply pressure in a vise or press of some type.

I managed to find a hot foil chase for type holding purposes, in a size that fit my type perfectly. I’m thinking of adapting it for my use, but I’m having a hard time reconciling my need for adapting it, the price I paid for it and the fact that it’s an antique, and I could probably find a chase without the design if I looked hard enough.

That being said the results withe chase were very nice and the chase is exactly what I had beening thinking about when I first started monkeying around with the type.

I’ve decided that I’m going to offer this as a service on my website as soon a Kikkerland gets off their duffs and charges me and mail out my moleskines. I ordered them ages ago and haven’t seen or heard anything. humph.

I don’t know why I never filled this sketchbook, it has pages of all my favorite paper, arches, canson, stonehenge, copperplate, and others. I love them all, but for whatever reason this journal and I never became friends. I also tore an entire signature out of it…this was back when I lived in Maine (2002-2003) and I was selling a lot of pieces on eBay. It’s also from around the same time I started working on my website. It’s come a long way. Most of the pieces are quick watercolor sketches, done while sitting on the waters edge, usually between the hours of 7 and 9 for one beach I would then travel to the next waterfront location and work until 1 or 2pm. I’d then go to the local natural grocery store and pick up lunch. Or if I was being smart eat a bag lunch I would bring with me. These summers were great summers I worked a mere 20 hours a week and my bills were low. I was able to afford my meager lifestyle on those 20 hours a week and my eBay sales.

I tnk that because of the paper in this sketchbook I felt like I couldn’t use it, intimidated by the paper.

That is a point I would love to get to again. 20 hours on the DayJob and full time on art. That is the life. Not to say that art isn’t hard work, hell I used to put in a full 40 to 50 hours a week on art, stopping only for meals often those 2 summers I would stay up late and get up early.I was perhaps the hardest working artist out there. What I mean to say is that I would love to work on something I love again, rather than something I tolerate.

I just put the journal below up onto eBay. It has an integrated penslip. I like how it came out and I’ve figured out how it can be done without adding a whole addition strip of leather, I could simply turn over the leather and add some eyelets. Trial and error. I went with my gut on this one and I think it turned out well. It perfectly holds a pencil or two. It’s pretty sweet! 200 pages of Southworth linen textured paper in light gray. I used brht red linen to sew it up and cut a rough jagged edged red strap from a deer hide. Pretty good if I do say so myself.





I used this book as a way to experiment with a few things for a couple of custom orders I’ve got in the works. I’m pretty happy with both of the things I’m playing with here.

This journal details my experience volunteering at a festival. It was a headache and a weird experience. I won’t go more into it here, but I would suggest that if you get a chance to volunteer at a festival make sure that everything is well planned in advance. Make sure you get a firm commmitment from the people in charge of everything that they intend to provide, if they don’t’ you’ll be up a creek without a paddle.

I had to stay late at the DayJob, while it’s a consternation it’s a necessary evil for the time being. I really can’t wait for the holidays to be over. Not to be a scrooge but it’s a hard time of year to work in retail. I’m pretty exhausted.

I’ve been working on a few projects, one very cool project which includes adding secret compartments to a journal, I’m having fun with it, but I hit a major snag when it came to gluing up the journal. The glue I normally use fouled up a pocket, so I have to rethink what I’m going to use for the pockets….I’m getting lines printed at a local print shop, though, each time I have time to stop by they aren’t open!!! So hopefully Tuesday I’ll be able to get the lines printed.

I noticed this several days ago, but I thought that I would point it out before anyone else did that my user name on youtube was intended to be ComfortableShoesStudio. What I didn’t realize that e I hit enter my user name was 2 letters too long and thus YOuTube automatically cut off 2 letters, the last 2 letters.

So my user name ComfortableShoesStud. I’m hanging my head in shame that I didn’t notice this before I finalized everything. But this also explains why I’ve gotten several messages from users who have “invited” me to view the close up videos of their Brazilian wax job. Which seems like a horrifying prospect to me. So yeah, head over to YouTube and checkout ComfortableShoesStud, it’s not some hot oiled down hunk of manly muscle it’s just me, kind of soft and pudgy Leslie. I swear there will be no “studly” videos!

Another You Tube post

Not quite as personal as the last but it’s one of my first leather covered journals. I think I made it in 2002. I last wrote in it in 2005. It’s survived a lot- my backpack for 2 years, camping and many moves.