There is a great blog over here called Notebook Stories.They do reviews of notebooks, find great artists and doodlers as well as notebook addicts. Great stuff. I should see if they will review some of my notebooks…
Anyway it's a great blog and everyone should go over and check it out.
Whew. In addition to mowing the lawn* I managed to finish that fat stack of 7 hedgehog/ moleskin notebooks I've been sitting on for close to 2 weeks. The elastics and envelopes went in in no time and pressed for a few hours. In that time I glued 6 more blocks into leather covers.
I pulled the finished books out of the press, signed and dated them, stuffed business cards in the pockets and then shot pictures. Edited said pictures and then listed all the items to my artfire shop. It went smoothly and everything looks good.
Thursday I visited my friend in Swampscott and she had been hoarding some paper and advertising posters for me. I walked away with 20 or so posters and about 2 reams of paper. I'll be able to use the guillotine to chop them up into nice matchbook notebooks. The posters are already chopped to size and will be stored until the next time I make a big batch of jotters. I also got some plastic posters that I use for jigs. I set up a jig to make covers with some of the left over scraps as the spine with some great backer board as the cover. I picked up some 30×40 sheets of backer board at the Charette clearance sale in Woburn.So I'm going to try out some new books and stitches. Fun stuff planned.
Tomorrow I'm headed to Western Mass to help a friend set up an ArtFire and an Etsy shop. I"ll spend the afternoon testing out my skillz.
*no small feat considering that it's rained every weekend for the last 3 weeks and I've not been able to mow for that whole time. The grass was halfway to my knees and I"ve got an electric lawn mower… It wasn't pretty.
These jotters almost didn't make it to Artfire. I'm so in love with the shades of green on the covers of these notebooks these almost remained mine.IF I didn't already have a box full of jotters these would have been mine. My loss is everyone's gain 'cause they are on ArtFire here.
You can also follow the link to the images of these on Flickr and see more pictures of jotters and other notebooks.
You can find the following there:
9 sets of Jotter notebooks
5 hedgehog or moleskine style journals
11 various styles of recycled journals
1 large leather journal
2 art supply rolls
1 sewing cradle
See everything here!
Immediately after finishing my last hedgehog/ moleskin I started a new one. This one has distressed brown and black sheep hide covers, is 3.5×5.5 in size and was entirely hand made by me. It got kraft paper pages which is something new for me to work on. I used rough wrapping paper kraft paper for the pages too so it has a great texture for drawing and such.
So far it has been taking every sort of abuse I can hand to it, thus far in this book, I’ve gesso’d pages in clear and white, tinted pages with acrylic, glued in magazine pages with matte medium, sanded gesso off the pages, added layers of magazine, acrylic and ink. I’ve scraped with a pallet knife and credit cards. I’ve wiped on and off with a rag. All in all this paper is tough as nails. Unlike the 140lb printmaking paper it does cockle a bit but after drying it smooths out quite a bit. I’m very pleased with the amount of abuse that this book has taken, and to think that this books was one I deemed unsalable because I screwed up and trimmed the cover short. (Note how far the fore edge pokes out from the cover. Looks good with this but not so good when first made.)
After you get done looking at these pictures head on over to my Flickr account and see more pictures. I didn’t load them all here because it takes longer but at flicker you can see all the spreads thus far that are in the book.
This is the most interesting artist website I’ve looked at. The set up is great, the drawing are fantastic. Excellant all around. Take a look at her sketchbook pages here. She uses ink in a moleskine notebook.
I’m a big fan of sketchbooks and what goes into them the blog to follow has a great selection of scans and text about the sketchbooks she uses. Great little drawings and great color. She uses my favorite mediums- ink and watercolor combination. Awesome stuff.
Its gift-giving season. There are a lot of options out there
for the giver, but if your looking for handmade books or journals my etsy shop
is full. It’s too late for a custom order but that’s a thought for next year.
For the tree hugger on your list, check out my assortment of
recycled content journals and notebooks. I’ve got a few 100% recycled content
notebooks left and plenty of journals with recycled covers, in both paper and
vinyl. See them here.
For the moleskine enthusiast check out my hand bound
hedgehog notebooks. A hedgehog notebook is a handmade version of the moleskine.
Mine feature decadent leather covers, writing paper or cardstock for sketching,
leather bookmarks, envelopes in the back and an elastic closure. Check them out
in my etsy shop.
Maybe you’ve got someone on your list into large 400 page
journals? I’ve got one left in fantastic brown leather, great paper and a
unique one of a kind binding. It’s on sale $25 off. Check it out here.
If I’ve got nothing that interests you look around on etsy
and buy handmade this holiday season.
