I read an article in a magazine at B&N last night about Van Gogh, those of you who know me in real life know of my obsession with his work, in particularly his ink sketches. Back when I lived alone I checked out book that had a great deal of images from his huge assortment of sketches and drawings from Arles of the local landscape. I love those sketches. I photocopied them and had them all over my apartment, so that everywhere I looked I had great art to look at. I spent a great deal of time that summer outside sketching with pen and ink, no thinking of making my own reed pens; I did use brush, dip pen and fountain pens. I also dipped sticks in ink and used those to work. My work while it held a variety of line and were some what interesting never had the huge variety of line that the sketches I viewed of Van Gogh’s which I tried too emulate in my own fashion.

These little sketches in my moleskine are using a reed pen, Van Gogh’s instrument of choice, in Arles, anyhow. I picked a variety of reeds while at Charrette today, from their parking lot no less. I brought them home and got out the click knife and began experimenting. I downloaded instructions and some of them worked and some didn’t. What I found is that every reed size needs a style of cut. I’m sure that not all reeds are a like and that the reeds I used, a local reed for Mass, may not use the same cut as the reeds from Arles.

I found that the larger reeds didn’t produce as nice a pen as the thinner reeds. I’m sure with practice I can get a nice pen from the larger reeds, but the thinner reeds, about a ¼ inch in diameter, were just as stiff as the larger reeds and didn’t split as much. If anything I found that the larger reeds made a very flexible tip, that didn’t hold nearly the amount of ink as a smaller reed. This may be due to how I cut the reed but I haven’t had time to experiment with different cuts.

On my way home from work tomorrow I will head the back way and stop behind the strip mall and gather a wide variety of reeds. The reeds there grow much taller than the reeds in the parking lot at Charrette, we’re talking close to 10 to 12 feet tall. I’m interested in seeing if the bases of these reeds are sturdy and thick and if they are more so than the other reeds.

Anyway the lines produced from reeds are painterly and effective in shading and texture. I need to now find something to draw with texture so that I can really play with these reeds.

Here are a few examples of my sketches with reed, as well as some EDM inspiration.

I’ve finished the small covers that I had made already. I switched to slots for these sewings as I felt that I have a ton of stationed sewings on etsy. So one of these will go for eBay and the other 3 for etsy. Tonight I’m also going to work on the 6 recycled books I have set to go. I’m going to use a variety of Keith Smith sewings for those.

I’m pretty happy with the 4 journals I finished today. The details on them are as follows:
All have an Eaton 24lb paper with 25% cotton content in cream. 200 pages in 10 signatures sewn onto slots. I used Irish linen in a variety of colors. (The golden deer hide is double sewn.) all the sewing styles are a variation on the long stitch, either with angled stitches or decorative Xs sewn into the open areas of the spine. All have my usual flap with a strap, I cut extra wide straps for these journals.

So I’ve been in a crazed book making fit today. I’ve made 3 of the recycled books and made another 6covers. It’s not fast but it works. This time around I’ve remembered to score all teh folds… I forgot that on one ofthe books I made before, not a good idea.

So the books on etsy are here:
Distressed Leather Spine
Oil Tanned Leather Spine

And the one on ebay is here:
Black Leather Spine

The new covers are pretty nice too. I used a larger variety of scraps so I have a nice selection of spines.

Now its time for me to cut some covers for paying gigs!

I’ve been working on the new book style since last night and I’ve got it worked out pretty decently. I cut a cover sheet and score it (that’s important) then glue down a scrap of leather to the spine area. I use a nice thick PVA, so it doesn’t soak into the leather too much so causes minimal shrinking and bending of the card cover. I then fold the excess from the card in toward the middle; attach elastic then glue in some folded accordion pleats to form the envelope. I clamped all that over night. Today I marked the spine and cut slots or punched holes. I did a series of 4 sets of stations so that I could fit 200 pages in the 1-inch spine. However 160 pages would be enough too.

I chose a series of simple sewings for these spines, I like how all but one came out. I used thick chunky hemp, un-waxed and let them fray a bit, I like the look.

Essentially everything in these books is recycled or re-used in some way. The cardboard came from the bakery at work, where it’s used to protect delicate cookies in shipment. The Leather comes from my scrap pile. The inner paper comes from the recycle heap at work. Often large companies change their advertising branding and assorted things like this paper either get used in-house to print memos and things on or they get tossed into the recycle heap. In the case of this paper a 2000 sheet ream was tossed into the recycle heap because it had words printed on one side, top and bottom and no one wanted to take the chance that things would be printed over the words. So I was able to bring it home chop off the words and the company logo and I was left with paper with a series of pale green printed borders and one side plain. It’s awesome paper so I’m pretty excited about it working out for this project. I get 3 covers from each sheet of card and I can cut sheets until I get bored. I’ll be mixing these up and putting them on etsy and eBay. They will be in limited quantities; I’ll run out of cover material quickly! I’m not sure about pricing though. I’ll have to figure it out in terms of how long they take me to make.

I think the card is a nice compliment to the rough leather I used. I’ll be experimenting with other leathers as time goes on, but so far these 3 were great.

Here they are:

I’ll post links to eBay and etsy later.

I started to stitch this journal last night with about a half hour before bedtime, ofcourse I chose the one journal in my stack that has a sewing that will take more than an hour. I could have just used the black thread and saved myself the time of the double sewing but I can’t resist the diffculty that the double sewing requires. It’s simpl and effective for a fat thick sewing that sinks into the leather, especially this thick leather. have I mentioned that I’m in love with this leather. It’s so damn soft I can’t believe it. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s the deer hide. I then turned around and adhered it to the mango paper, which just added an even heavier texture to the cover. You can’t see it but he cover is realy very thick.

With the cover being delectable I added my favorite paper as the pages. I’ve got about 250 sheets of this paper left and I’m hoarding it. It’s foxrivers natural confetti, 25% cotton, 24lb, acid free and in my book an incredible writing paper, it rival strathmores 25% cotton renewal paper. It’s thick, stiff and a delight to write upon with pencil, roller ball, or *sigh* my pelikan fountain pen.

So i used my #18 mislabeled as #12 thread to sewin it, in warm brown, it works muchbetter with the golden shade of the leather than black, which while it can be nice can seem harsh. I did a simple long stitch pattern but linked the center section. It’s simpl and lets the double stitching show itself off.

I had a hard time parting with this one for etsy, but it’s up there and ready! Link following the pictures.

See this hot baby on Etsy.com

I’ve been playing around/ experimenting [which sounds more professional? ;)] with using a similar station pattern to see what i can get out of it in terms of different links, angles and what not. These journals are some of those experimental books. i have one more I haven’t finished stitching yet but we’ll see where they go. So far so good. These books are also listed on etsy.com rather than ebay. They were a lot more work than some of my journals and thus I can’t bare to part with them for possibly nothing.

I had a special order that required bright red thread. So I ordered a whole spool and thus lots of goth looking red and black journals will follow. Kidding, Red and black is a classic combination and it looks good. So here is a black pebbly textured cover, sheep hide with red irish linen stitchin in a patterned long stitch with linking. Simple but sweet. There are 200 pages of tan granite colored paper inside. It has a nice texture, smooth enough to use a fountain pen but rough enough to accept pencil with less than normal smudging. It’s a nice warm paper, which I thought might not match the cover but what the hell, I’d rather have nice paper than something not as nice, plus this paper is wonderfully writable.

Link following the pictures.

Black Leather with Red Stitching

The journal below is a marigold yellow, more like a light buckskin colored deer hide. It’s been adhered to an orange marbled paper. The strap was cut extra thick and extra long. This leather is incredibly soft, it feels like nubuck. I’ve lucked out on leather lately, the last 5 hides or so that I’ve bought have been decadent and wonderful. Simply amazing. I bought 2 of these hides and man am I happy I did.

The MOST incredible thing about this journal is that it has 200 pages of Southworth 100% cotton paper. The paper is crisp smooth and heavy weighing in at 28lbs per sheet. It has a slight tooth that is perfect for drawing with pencil over all a decadent sheet.

Enough talk some pictures: LInk toetsy below:

You can get this journal here: Golden Deer Hide JOurnal

I have posted to eBay an 8X11 journal that was a rough draft for the big journal for a sale. the final journal sold in the $70 range but I’m unsure of how this jorunal will do on eBay. Its got 160 pages of 80lb strathmore drawing paper, sewn in unbleached naturally colored irish linen in a patterned long stitch.
Here are some pics

As of late my eBay fees have skyrocketed I’m not sure if they have revamped their fee structure or not but it’s becoming less profitable for me to use eBay. I’m losing a larger piece of my money to them every time I make a sale. Then to add to it the PayPal fees, which are quite reasonable in comparison to other online credit card shops it’s a huge chunk of my cash. Depending on how much my item sells for I lose about 6% every time I make a decent sale, add to that the 2% PayPal takes and that’s 8% of my income.

I like that etsy takes a flat 4%. That’s it. I’m frustrated with the fees associated with eBay. Sure some people are on there making their living on the sales from eBay and some people are on there making thousands on electronics, but I’m just one single crafty person! I can’t afford to give up almost 10% of my hard-earned income to some big company!

With the restructure of my website and the switch to etsy I’m going to look into restructuring my eBay strategy and we’ll see how that goes. Not to worry though, I’m looking at working on the website after the new year, so hopefully with 2006 I’ll be ushering in a new website too, thought it may not be until February when I get to it. I’m hoping to take a week or at least a few days off work to work on it. I’m pretty sure it will be best if I work on it in one long caffeine fueled stretch of time, rather than breaking it all up into small chunks of time. In the end I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.

this journal started out normally enough, a request for a custom order. Easy enough rigth? Yeah. I took the oreder and from tehre I screwed up royaly each time I tried to make it. First I sewed it up in the wrong leather- a light distressed finish and then I forgot the eyelets. I stitched up that journal and it looked good. It’s up on eBay right now.

I cut myself a new cover, with the right leather, and cut the station and added eyelets. I then proceded with the sewing, i thumbed throught eh thread and picked the natural linen rather than the black linen. the black faded into the dark leather and the sewing was non-visible. So I stitched her up and the spine looks great. Reading through the emails from the personwho ordered it, I see now that he specifically wanted the black. &*^&^%%^$ I can restitch it but I can’t seem to get this thing right. The book itself is wonderful and looks great but if I can screw upone more thing it’ll be a wonder.

Anyhow the specs areas follows:
150 pages of Strathmore drawing apper in cream
long stitch with eyelets and natural irish linen
Dark Distressed leather
Orange marbled paper backing
Raw flap and strap
it’s 8 by 11 inches and an Inch and a half thick.

See the pics below.

I used to be very nervous about making a journal with over 300 paegs, since I’ve now made a few of them, i’m not. The book if sewn properly does just fine, the tension of the thread to the paper hold the spine tight and doesn’t allow the spine to tear as I previously thought it would. It creates a very thick and surprisingly sturdy books. It does have a tendency to warp out and the center pages to fall, but the tension, again, prevents this from being nearly as bad as I had expected it to be.

Anyhow, here are the specs on this book:
400 pages of cream eaton sewn into an alternation of linking long stitch, plain long stitch and a double twist, all in natural unbleached Irish linen thread. It’s a heavy pattern to match the heavy book. It is also slightly different than I had first envisioned it, I skipped a stitch descending from the endbanding and went directly to the linking. The stitch after the endbanding seemed too heavy, even for this book. So I skipped it. The leather is a dark brown with a slight distressed finish. THe leather is adhered to a marbled orange paper. IN the back is a hidden pocket, moleskine style that expands on all 3 sides to take in a lot of “stuff.” It’s got my standard strap and raw edge. I’m happy with how it worked out.

Check it out here: