Today has been an uneventful day. I’ve spent much of my time loading things onto the new computer and trying to find all the websites I’ve visited on a regular basis and distinguishing those from the ones I need for the studio. I do feel somewhat lost without the website to work on and of course when I went to the site, I notice that many of the images are broken links. There isn’t much I can do about it now, but hopefully my little brother will get on the ball and send me a disk or 2.

In more Studio related news, I have 2 custom orders, one is very romantic and one is very practical. Both have their separate challenging issues- one is a size issue and the other is a question of how do I bind 700 full sized pages of emails into a book? (actually I dont think it will be that difficult.) The size issue is one I can deal with most easily what I’ll need to do is do 3 separate sewing that are hidden, one at the head, one at the tail and the final in the center. This will keep the shape of the book block- or the pages even and tight. The final decorative sewing will take place along the spine and will be supported by a layer of leather, tyvek and probably paper as well as the decorative paper I use to back the leather. The email question is one of how to manipulate the pages into a format that can be bound easily. What I need is pagemaker, but that’s on my old computer. I was also able to do it in Lotus; does anyone remember Lotus123? I loved lotus, word only even more user friendly.

Now that I’m done with this I’m going to be loading up some clearance items on eBay. Mainly because I just need to get rid of them, but also because I need to make some cash to pay off this damn computer, and start to save up for a new monitor.

My computer crashed, big time, the hard drive failed and probably next week or so I’ll find out how much information I’ll be able to save and if any at all. I’m chalking it up to a complete loss and as a result I had to buy a new computer. It’s not much of a step up from the old, though it does have 200G of hard drive space. It is a big step up from the old- it has three times the processor as the old but a little less RAM.

I’ll be re-shooting the journals I have here, but many are gone and there’s no fixing that. The lesson learned here is that I should back up all my images often just in case.

I’ve been working like a mad woman at my day job and it’s taken it’s toll on the amount of journals I’ve been able to make when I come to my studio. I’ve pretty much come home and tried to clean my tables and put things away and organize. Every little bit helps, right? After I get that done I crash and sleep.

I’ve decided in the depth of my day job tiredness, that I’ll been cleaning out some of my back stock- those old journals that have been sleeping restlessly in storage. I’m going to put them up on eBay as buy it now for ridiculous prices, crazy low prices and get them homes where they’ll be used. Love them as I may, they are just taking up space here, and they deserve a good home.

Luckily for me I’ve gotten back into the routine of heading straight for the studio when I come home, rather than parking my butt infront of the TV. At least I get something done.

I had a custom journal order not too long ago, this is the journal I made for Greg O. a serious artist in his own right and a wonderful coworker. So here it is:

He loves it and the toughness of the binding is being proven everyday! He throws it in his messenger bag with a mug, paints in it and sketches wonderful ilttle drawings in it. From this sketchbook, I decided that my next will be filled with that wonderful kraft paper! I drew on a scrap, and god it had a great feel. It reminds me of the paper that the SMFA had in giant rolls, back when I took a figure drawing course. Not only does it fel great, it can take a load of different media, with minimal buckling and issues. Love it! It’s my new favorite filler paper.

Back to making books!

PS Greg painted the portrait of me that is my icon!