Whew! Today is my first sort of day off from the day job in over 7 days. Crazy!

So I’m rested and ready to go in the studio. I’m working on a larger size journal and thinking about how it will work in terms of the spine. I know from my own experience that I need to reinforce the spine with stiff paper. If I don’t it won’t stay straight. The journal that I made with very heavy paper and very heavy leather warped all over. I also did 12 signatures of heavy paper. I plan on reinforcing this spine with tyvek and heavy stiff paper. I’m thinking of picking up some canson in black.

I’m pretty excited that Strathmore has come out with a black archival paper. I’m not sure if it’s lightfast, but it’s heavy and feel like the drawing paper but heavier.

As a test for this larger sized sketchbook I’m making a book the same size but with fewer signatures. I’ve cut the paper and the cover now I just have to reinforce the spine and back it. Having not been in the studio for a week I realize I’ve run out of glue. Sadly I’ll have to leave the house again.

I may offer this one for sale, but I really would like to keep one of these journals. I’ve been reading the Artist’s Journals community again and well, it has my creative juices going and really, it’s something I’ve not done for awhile, so perhaps a beautifully bound journal is what I need to start creative journaling again.

As tired as I am from the day job I did manage to come home, watch some quality TV and then package, weigh, label and generally get ready for shipping a large assortment of journals. I’m pretty happy with the paying for and printing off of postage through paypal, it’s pretty seamless, I hate the fees associated with it but overall it’s not too bad. So all that will go in the mailbox tomorrow morning.

I’ll probably be at the day job until who knows when.

So tomorrow will be a minimal studio day. We’ll see if I even have energy to cut paper or fold it.

Last night I started to put the glue on a bunch of leather sheets for gluing up covers. Last night I was able to finish with 9 of them in an hour and a half. Today I spent 2 hours gluing the leather to the backing papers, trimming and reinforcing the spine areas. So far so good. I decided that some of the covers should have differently sized paper in them, so some of the journals will be listed on the website as my stock journals and some will be put up on eBay. Though I’m pretty sure I want to get away from eBay as my main source of art income, I get far too little for the journals, barely enough to cover cost.

After I trimmed everything down to size and made the edges all pretty, I started to lay-out and cut the slots for the spine. In another hour and a half I finished that. (A grand total of 5 hours on 9 covers.) I made what I’m calling the half inch series- all the heads and tails are exactly one half inch from the edge. I’m not doing head and tail bands because of the excessive time they take to sew. These will be my most basic and reasonably priced journals. If any more of my journals go up on eBay, these will be it. I am quite addicted to the positive feedback, regular sales and the gamble of eBay so I may keep on using the service. Getting $10.50 for a journal that took me 2+ hours to makes me a little ill.

Tomorrow I will be completely useless for anything related to journal making. I will be so tired from work that I will probably come home and sleep. Mother’s day is a huge flower holiday and the day job is going to be draining.

I heard back from the guy who is having his emails to his fiancé bound- I’m sending him some leather samples so he can decide on a color for his books. The whole thing is definitely a romantic idea, and anyone I’ve told about the project has said “Ohh that’s so romantic, why can’t my boy/girl friend be like that?!”

I’ve also thought some more on the large scale sketchbook- I think it can be done, I’m just going to have to reinforce the h*ll out of the spine. In the small journals a little tyvek goes a long way and makes the leather 100% more stiff. I think that to expand that 6 inch spine to 11 or 9 inches is going to require 2 layers of tyvek but also a layer of nice stiff paper. I’m also going to have to be very selective with the hide- any separation is going to be very noticeable and cause weakness. That being said, it’s also going to take a full hide to select from, which could be fantastic with the edges!

I’ll get some pics up of those covers tomorrow morning, right now I’m beat and can’t wait for some shuteye!

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!