I have decided to take my journals that are for sale off my website and move them to etsy.com. I decided this after realizing I haven’t made a single sale from the site in 2 years. It’s a great place to showcase my custom work and highlight what I can do in custom work, but the sales just aren’t there to support it. So what does this all mean?

Well, my etsy site is Comfortableshoes.etsy.com I’ll move the books that are for sale to there in the upcoming weeks. Prices will change in accordance with my new pricing structure. Meaning they’ll go up a tad. Those pages that are selling an item now will redirect people to my etsy page. I had thought of auctioning off some of the items on there but I can’t bear to think of some of them going for less than they are listed. I think that etsy is an affordable alternative to my low hit website.

Not to fear though, I plan on keeping the site up and running but it’s purpose will change. It will go from a website of art and books to one simply of books. I’ll keep a link for the art, but it won’t be highlighted the way it is now. I haven’t painted in ages and to have the paintings highlighted is simply foolhardy and wishful thinking. (I do hope that someday I spend my summers painting again.) I’ll be turning the page on journals and notebooks toa gallery of pictures and styles. I’ll be totally revamping the page into something that is hopefully a little slicker. It will mean my taking sometime to re-teach myself Dreamweaver as I seem to have lost the rudimentary skills I once possessed.

I don’t have a lot of ideas for it quite yet but it will be something that I continue to wrok on over the next few months. I expect that the move to etsy.com will take some time and won’t happen for a month or so. For now I’ll focus on moving things slowly and one at a time.

I had a request for a medieval/renaissance historical looking journal. This is it. While it’s not strictly true to renaisance binding, it’s a modern twist to the style.

It’s 200 pages of cream Eaton 24lb, 25% cotton paper. A deep chocolate brown seep hide and deer leather accents. Black irish linen for the sewing in a linking long stitch sewn to stations. I worked this one a little differently thanothers, I first stiched on the 1/2 the signatues, leaving room for the others. I then came back and stitched ont eh other 5, linking through as I stitched them on. This is a much easier way to sew alinking long stitch and I think it’s how I shal do themfrom now on, it was THAT much easier. It’s a 6×9 inch book and is about an inch and a half thick. It’s gefty and feels nice to hold.

Onto the pR0n:

Okay so a lot of people ask about how to attach a pen to a moleskine/hedgie. I stick to fountain pens which are a little larger than many pens (cross Ion seems to be the most popular.) Here’s how I attach my rotring Graphite fountain pen (Or my Vintage Pelikan GO! pen.)

First I hook the clip through the elastic, pointing away from the spineof the book. I then bring the pen to the back of the book.

Then I stick my fingers through the elastic at the bottom of the book a couple of twists later I am able to form a loop that will hold my pen.

I stick my pen into the loop and release. It holds well in my bag but not so well in my back pocket.

I’ve been considering for some time if I would like an eBay store in addition to my regular listings. This would open up a variety of options for me. I could list an item for an indefinite period of time and it could be buy it now. Someone could look at the item for a very long tie and then decide to buy it, rather than having only 7 days to decide if they like it or want it.

There are many positives to this approach but the drawbacks are large amounts of money. The initial insertion fee is only 2 pennies but the final fee is 8 percent of the final value, up to $25 and then it’s 5 percent on any money over $25! So the book that I sold for $75 would have had $4.52 in fees, in addition to the $16 that I would have to pay monthly for the store. The usual amount in fees is $3.60, including the listing fee! That’s nearly a full dollar difference.

The major thing I would be paying for is the huge AMOUNT of time a store lets you leave items up, they can be there for 30 days or as long as it takes to sell. If I were selling 100’s of books that were identical I would find this format useful, however as it is now it’s not a good fit for me. I’ll continue to poorly utilize my website.

If eBay were to make the fee less, I’d think about getting a store, if it were $9 or so, I just can’t use the store effectively and pay as much as it is currently. It’s just too much.

In other news I’ve been sketching out a lot of designs in a hedgie I made for the purpose. I carry it with me at all times, even at the DayJob. When inspiration strikes I’ll run and take brief break and sketch out an idea. It’s also a good way to think out ideas for the books.

And example:
I’ve been working on a medieval inspired design for someone and I was going to stick with something very simple, no ornamentation, and simple long stitch sewn into stations. I liked the idea- it would be very faithful to the medieval books. BUT, medieval books often were very ornate. I want to get the simple rustic feeling in there but with a little ornament. Thinking this through and looking at images online and in books I came up with an idea. In my little book I sketched it out and then worked it out in sketches and words. My thought process became evident through 5 pages or so of sketches. I then drew up a template and cut it from kraft paper and worked it so it was exactly what I was looking for. This I traced to cardboard and then used it to cut leather. I’ve been working ideas out this way for years but I’ve always done it Joseph Cornell style on scraps of paper which I would later gather and toss into a box, eventually tossing it out (very unlike Cornell). Now I’m making an effort to either think things out in this little book or to save the scraps and paste them in. If I find odd “thought Scraps” around my studio I’m pasting them in.

Now I’ve got a whole series of little books to think in.

(I’ll scan in some pictures of my little notbooks.)

I’m really sorry to have to do this topeople, but the SPAM-BoTS have found my blog. I”m putting comments on word verification. If you leave a comment (Which I welcome and want) you’ll have to verify that you are a person and enter in a word that will appear on the screen. I’m sorry to have to do this, but I’ve become very tired of deleteing 90% of the comments onhere and than not being able to find half the spam comments.

Hopefully you won’t be detered byt this, and you’ll also be happy that when you click on a comment link that it will be content rather than either a “This comment hasbeen deleted by the administrator” or some spam.

I had a request for a reporter style hedgie. So i made it. these are exactly like my other hedgies, sans bookmarker. These are lined per the request of the gentleman who requested them.

I also made 10 hedgies in 3 days. I sped the process up by using the pre-cut paper. It greatly increased my efficency. I found that I did make a few mistakes in regards to gluing, but those were easily remedied. The one mistake I made that could NOT be fixed was when I cut holes in a navy hedgie and also cut throught he book mark. That one will go up on ebay. Sigh. I was tired and should have stopped working about an hour before i cut those holes.

Here’s the family shot:

This is a pretty simple hack but I thoguht I’d post about it anyhow.

I bought a photocorner punch a few weeks ago. I thoguth it was a corner rounder. Much to my surprise I grabbed the first hedgehog I got my hand on and it produced this:

So I shoved a business card in there. i punched a few other pages and if I fold a sheet of 8.5X11 paper just right it fits beautifully into the slot and I can carry it inside my hedgie.

While I was at work I had a messy note shoved into my pocket and I really wanted to put it into my hedgie just the way I had done with my business cards and my map (to the blick store in Boston!) but of course I didn’t have my punch with me. It got me to thinking how I could carry a punch with me but not.

Here’s my solution. I cut a corner off a priority mailer envelope, about an inch and a half on each folded edge. I then measured against it- roughly a quarter inch from each side a business card. On here I measured a series of 4 holes along the edges of my card. I punched them with my screw punch, and connected the dots on 2 sides.

What i edged up was this:

This slides over a corner and I can cut through the pattern and create a slot to hold material in my hedgie. IF I’m careful it doesn’t go through the pattern backside and into the next page of my hedgie.

It creates a straight line rather than the delicate curve of the punch but it’s quite nice and holds a decent amount.

So This is the set up I used before I started to makea lot of books and needed a larger paper cutter.

This is the Fiskars photo trimmer, it trims 2 to 5 sheets at a time and utilizes a fixed blade in a little plastic handle.

I start by lining my trimmer with a line on my cutting mat, if you line it up right you can usethe lines on your cutting mat to cut at specific sizes. I then use duct tape or in this case packing tape to hold the trimmer in place. I put them along the right hand edge.

After I taped the trimmer down I measured from the cutter to where the paper would end on the left side of the trimmer. I butted a piece of waste cardboard to where the paper would end and taped it down also using packing tape. I always tape on the outter most corners and top and bottom ofhte waste card. If the card isn’t securely taped down it will lift and allow paper to slide beneath it. Making it useless as a jig/cutting guide.

After it’s taped down you can cut away. I always did a few test cuts to check and makesure my measurements were correct, nothing worse than cutting aream of paper only to find out at the last mintue you didn’t measure right.