Another Curious Contest

I mentioned this on Twitter/Facebook a few days ago, and have been meaning to blog about it. Another blog contest I'm entering is over at TotusMel's Wunderkammer, which is a really good place to find fantastic things for sale on Etsy. I have found a tonne of things I intend to buy once I'm making good money again. Anyway, read about the contest on this post--it's another one that ends today. But even if you read it too late, check out the blog and the Etsy shops of the prize donors (and the shops of people mentioned in other blog posts). This really is some of the very coolest stuff Etsy has to offer.

Prize #1: SteamPunk Key Pendant by Aranel

Prize #2: Absinthe Magnet by WinonaCookie

Prize #3: Leather Circlet Crown by Tom Banwell

Prize #4: $30 Gift Certificate to Adornments For Tarts by Choklit

Prize #5: Scotch Liquor Label Necklace by BellaLili

Prize #6 (I really, really want prize #6): Gear Necklace by Zkitten

Prize #7: Custom Drawstring Bustle Skirt by Crescentwench

Steampunk Rings Contest

I've long admired the rings by Catherinette Rings, and managed to snag a garnet one on sale once, and now they're have a blog contest! It ends today, so if you want to enter , you have to do it quick. But even if you don't enter, go check out the jewelry. It's really cool, and there are a number of pieces on my wishlist.

Latest Writing: Groucho, Knockoffs and Words

Here are the things I've published in the last week or so:

• Quotes for Craftspeople: Groucho Marx and His Dog (HandmadeNews.org)
  
  I often have that Marx quote "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend . . ." stuck in my head, and I thought it would be fun to see if I could turn it into an article for Handmade News. It was fun. I think I'll do more Quotes for Craftspeople articles in the future, and maybe even make some of them more serious.




• Wost. PSP Knockoff. Ever. (About PSP)
  
  I found this fantastically awful dollar store toy made to look like a PSP, and of course I had to buy it. I photographed the thing from all angles and made an image gallery / mini review. As terrible as the "Fun Tech Water Toy" was, I had a blast, and am going to keep my eyes open for more PSP knockoffs to review. Anyone seen any they want to send my way?


• Bookbinding Bonanza Word Find (HandmadeNews.org)
  
  I thought it would be fun to try my hand at making a word find, and bookbinding seemed a natural topic to start with. Turns out, it's harder to make a word find than I thought. I could buy software to do all the hard work, of course, and if I do very many of these, I might. In the meantime, though, figuring out how to fit the words together is--I think--more fun than doing the actual puzzle.



• PSP Blue Raspberry Sours and PSP Cherry Sours Review and PSP Sours Novelty Candy Tins Image Gallery (About PSP)
  
  My fascination with things that look like PSPs but are not PSPs may have started with these PSP novelty candy tins I found at Freak Lunchbox. I also have a Nintendo NES controller tin and Nintendo magic Mario mushroon tin made by the same company. What can I say? I like videogames, and I like candy.

My goal, I've decided, is to get two significant pieces of work done each working day, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. "Significant" is subjective, of course. Some items, like small image galleries, might only take an hour to do. Some articles will take four hours or even more. (Anything that takes more than four hours counts as two things, at least). Any time left in between morning and afternoon jobs will get used for things like promo blogging (like this) and tweets, tweaking my online shops or adding product, business emails, and miscellaneous tasks that don't take very long.

So far today, I've accomplished my morning task (the PSP knockoff toy thing, above), and am currently doing the promo blogging stuff. In a few minutes, I'll get myself a cup of tea and a snack (possibly even lunch, though I'm not that hungry yet). Then I think this afternoon's task will be wrangling some tiny book earrings. I was intending to do some more writing--I have a number of articles to knock out for Suite 101 to get caught up--but my desk seems to be located in the warmest part of the house, and the heat is making me sluggish and headachey. Bleah. Plus, I intend to add some "what I did on the weekend" stuff to this blog later today, so I need a break from the computer.

I'm a Columnist! About Books!

Yes siree, I am now officially a columnist at Handmade News, in the "Inspiration" department. I'm writing a column about books and paper called Leaf by Leaf. I sort of borrowed the name from Joe's company, Leaf by Leaf Book and Paper Conservation. After spending more than a week trying to come up with a good column title and not being able to come up with anything that didn't sound stupid, and after almost going with "Bookish," I chose Leaf by Leaf partly because the word "leaf" can refer to both a single sheet of paper and a page in a book, partly because it sounds nice, and partly as a tribute to Joe, who has been a fantastic teacher.

My first article is called "Hi, I'm Niko and I'm a Bibliophile," and it introduces me and the ideas I have for the column. Next week I'll have something on how to get started when you really want to make a book but have never done it before.

In other news, the boy and I have continued our exploration of Nova Scotia. Last weekend we drove down the Southern Shore as far as Kejimkujik Park Seaside Annex. Because we meandered along and stopped a few times along the way, we didn't really have time to get out and hike, but we took the highway on the return trip and it's only about an hour and forty-five minutes, so next time we'll drive straight there and spend the day exploring the park.

I took an awful lot of photographs, but didn't really end up with very many I liked. Sometimes it happens that way, I guess, but it was a bit disappointing, considering the fantastic scenery. Maybe I just need to pay more attention to framing pictures, instead of snapping everything that looks pretty.

Interestingly, most of the pictures I end up liking are close-ups. I rarely like the wide-angle landscape shots. Whether that's because I take more time composing the closer-up shots than I do the landscapes, or whether it's because that's just the kind of photograph I happen to like, I don't know.

Anyway. That was Saturday. On Sunday, we went up to Truro to spend some time in Victoria Park, and I didn't end up taking a single photograph, though I carried the camera around. We also wandered around the town (or city--I think it's actually a city) and had lunch. We peered in the windows of a couple of Real Estate places and found some interesting-looking houses. Yesterday we went back up and tried again to find one in particular--a cottage, really, but two bedrooms on four acres--that we had tried to find last week. This time the office was open, so we went in and got directions.

It's definitely a cottage sort of property, but it might work fine as a year-round house, too. It's rural, but about half an hour's drive from supermarkets and such, and actually only forty-five minutes from where we live now in Halifax. Also, the price is very good. Whether we'll take the plunge and make an offer, I don't know. We didn't get to see inside the place, but hope to get back on Monday to do that. We'd have to get my mom to co-sign the mortgage, too. But it sure would be nice to be paying into our own place instead of paying rent every month.

I took a couple of photos, but haven't uploaded them yet, but the listing is here.

Testing, Testing

One of the people whose work I follow on deviantART posted something today that got me thinking about Livejournal again. I haven't posted on Livejournal in ages. So I've decided to see if I can get both Livejournal and Blogger set up so that my Blogger Blog posts automatically show up on Livejournal. This here's the test to see if I got all the setting right.

Next, I'll see what I can do with MySpace.

Busy Busy Busy

Well, I'm definitely busy, even though my bank account doesn't show it. I'm expecting an avalanche of cash any day now. Hah hah.

The Democracy 250 project wrapped up last week. The final book (the one that needed some pages re-ordered) was picked up on Thursday, and I was there to get my photo taken for posterity. I'll post that when I get a copy of it. In the meantime, here's the last book (the unnumbered proof copy):


And here's what it looks like on the inside:


I particularly like that page because of the crazy porcupine.

Each book also had a custom-built box lined with soft felt. The boxes are not nearly as "deluxe" as the books, since they're meant to be functional rather than amazingly gorgeous. The design was kept simple--just plain black cloth with the title blocked on the front. Because of their large size, though, they had to be made sturdy.


With thick felt lining, they're quite cushy and should keep the books safe. Note that the lint and bits of white stuff gets masking-taped off before the books actually go inside. I just snapped my photo before they were quite ready to go.

Once I was done being photographed, Bill picked me up and we spent a couple of hours meandering around Point Pleasant Park. Because it was a weekday, the park was quiet and lovely. We got in some nature viewing:

And some exploration of historic sites. There are the remains of something like seven fortifications at Point Pleasant, and pretty much all of them are crumbling into the sea. They put chainlink fences up in a vain attempt to keep people out, but then don't maintain the fences when they fall down. It would be nice if there were at least a few interpretive panels so visitors know what they're looking at. I live here, and I still had to look online to find any information at all.


In some places, water seeping through from above has created cave-like deposits on the walls and especially places with overhangs. There were tiny stalactites which are actually quite lovely, but which can't be good for the integrity of the structures.


And of course, there are many, many rusty things poking out of the ground and lying on the ground and suspended in crumbling structures above the ground. And I do so love to photograph rusty things . . .

Help the Handmade Artists Forum Etsy Team Spread the Love

Every week, the Handmade Artists Forum Etsy Team (HAF Team for short--to find all of us on Etsy, search "hafteam" in keywords) features one shop each day on the Handmade Artists Forum. This week White Raven Arts is one of the chosen shops. I'm to be featured on Thursday. Here are all of the featured shops this week:

• Monday 8.10 - Crazy but Cute
  
  
  


• Tuesday 8.11 - Craftypants Carol
  
  
  


• Wednesday 8.12 - Bitsy Creations
  
  


• Thursday 8.13 - White Raven Press
  
  


• Friday 8.14 - Foret
  
  


• Saturday 8.15 - Seedlings Bits
  
  


• Sunday 8.16 - A Touch of Glass Jewelry
  
  

Please do visit these fine shops and support handmade art and craft.

Oh, Wait . . .

In all my blathering the other day about the terrible state of my finances and the fact that I might not get the Handmade News job after all (oh, poor me), I completely forgot: my editor at Handmade News (or the woman who will be my editor) is in New Zealand. This means me being in Canada shouldn't be any sort of problem at all. I just have to get the right bits of paper to fill out. Yay!

And today's mail brought my paycheque from About PSP, which means I can pay a few bills and things without having to get out the old VISA. The coolest thing about said paycheque is that, because About, Inc. is owned by the New York Times Company, the envelope is New York Times letterhead. So it looks like I write for the NYTimes, which is pretty darn cool.

And also in today's mail, I got the last part of my print order from deviantART. A while back they had a sale where members could order prints of their own stuff for the same price as Premium Print Account members do, which is more-or-less at cost. I was curious to see what the quality was, so I could decide if I want to offer prints of my stuff through dA. They ship different items separately, even though they only charge a single shipping fee, so I've been getting bits and pieces of my order every week or so. The two images I chose are my two digital illustration pieces (the only ones I had enabled as prints at the time).


I ordered postcards, small magnets and a small print of each one. The magnets arrived first, closely followed by the postcards. Then the 8 x 10 photoprint of "After Hokusai" (above). I couldn't get anything much larger, because the resolution of the original isn't high enough.


For "Orpheus and Eurydice" (above), I ordered an art print, matte on paper. It's 12 x 18 inches, which I think is the smallest I could get. That's the one that arrived today, and it looks fantastic. Woo hoo! I have to say, though, my very favourites of the things I ordered are the magnets. Now I have fridge magnets of my art! Just like I was a famous dead person whose work is cannibalized to raise money for art museums. Okay, it's nothing like that, but they are really, really cool. At some point, I'll order copies of the things I've since enabled as prints, to make sure they look good, too, but first I have to sell some stuff.

Oh, and on selling, the buyer for the last book I sold paid after I sent the invoice, so SteamBook 04 is on its way to Norway! I think I might get a world map and stick pins in it for eveywhere I've sold stuff. Or maybe I'll make a virtual one on my website, whenever I eventually get my website together. It would be cool if I could have one where you could click or mouseover a pin and an image of the item sold popped up. Yes, that would be cool. I wonder how I could make such a thing?

Links for prints: "After Hokusai: 37th View of Mt Fuji" here
"Orpheus and Eurydice, After Dulac" here

Pretty Things

I've just added a new piece of book jewelry to my Etsy shop. I really like this one, and considered keeping it for myself. But I figured I could always make another one.


In not so good news, I discovered this morning that National Student Loans took a $400 payment out of my account that they told me they weren't going to take. I'm supposed to be applying for some new repayment program that doesn't start till this month. Since my repayment started in July, I was told they'd suspend my payments until I could apply for the new thing. But when I talked to CIBC student loans, they informed me I should still have been directed to apply for interest relief for July. So I ended up having to make the July payment on my CIBC loans, too. That's about $600 in payments I had to make because of some telephone lackey's bad information. At least I knew the CIBC payments were going to happen. The other one was a surprise, and one I really couldn't afford. Hence the applying for repayment assistance. I'd really like nothing better than to pay off those loans, but it's not going to happen until I get some more work. Sigh. So I guess my credit cards get wracked up this month. Again.

In better news, though, I applied for a freelance writing gig with Handmade News, a website that does crafting news and articles. I didn't hear anything for ages, and ended up submitting a guest article (unpaid) because I happened to have one already written. Anyway, I just got the contract to sign yesterday! Problem is, all the tax forms are for the States. That's not been a problem for my About.com contract, so I'm hoping it won't be a problem here. I'm kind of worried that it *will* be a problem though. I'd really hate to find out I can't have the job after all. Even if I didn't need the added income, it would suck to lose out on this. I was so excited when I found out I got it yesterday. Keeping my fingers crossed (figuratively), even though it won't do any good.

'Nother Sale

Sometime yesterday another SteamBook sold on Etsy. The buyer chose PayPal, but didn't pay right away, so it's sitting in my sold list without me actually being paid. Not that I mind waiting, but a note from the buyer saying why would be nice. Anyway, I sent them a PayPal invoice, which will hopefully get them to contact me. Hmm. I sound like I'm complaining, don't I? I'm not really. Just thinking out loud, as it were.



Anyway, my very unscientific Etsy vs ArtFire experiment now stands thusly: Etsy 2, ArtFire 0. I'm curious about why. My initial thoughts were that it's because Etsy has been around longer and people looking for handmade stuff go there first. That could be it, though I've heard from others that they get more views on ArtFire, to the point that they consider it well worth it to pay the $12 or so per month to become verified members, rather than the 20 cents per listing plus selling fee per item on Etsy. If I sold enough stuff on ArtFire to equal the fees I'd pay selling the same things on Etsy, I'd spring for the verified ArtFire membership, but so far I've sold nothing.

I'm wondering if maybe one has to get the verified membership first, if that adds enough buyer confidence to get them to buy when they might not buy from an unverified member. But I really don't know. I might try a verified membership for a couple of months during the holiday buying season. Maybe if I do well enough at the Halifax Crafters Market and Word on the Street in September.

More on the D250 Project

I know I said I was going to go backwards in time with my updates, but I wanted to post some pictures of the Democracy 250 project that I shot yesterday and today.

I spent all of yesterday and part of today trimming out the turn-ins on the books and filling the boards in with thin card, so that when the endpapers are put down, the inside covers will be even.


You can see in the photo above that the leather around the edges is uneven. To make the book look neat, it needs to be trimmed so that the turn-ins are the same all the way around. Here's one in progress.


Yes, I got to take a knife to $600 worth of leather. Twelve times in a row. Fortunately, I didn't mess it up.

Sometimes it's not really possible to make all three sides equal, depending on how the leather stretched when it went on, and the kind of paper was used for the endpapers. The paper in the D250 books is handmade, so it won't stretch very much, which means that the turn-ins may have to be left wider at the side. In that case, we just make the top and bottom the same, and the edge as close as we can while still leaving enough to overlap with the endpapers.


Occasionally, the leather goes on so unevenly that there are small gaps where the boards will show once the endpapers are down. They might stretch enough to cover, but just in case, those spaces get filled in with scraps from the leather that was trimmed off.


Once the leather is trimmed, the boards are lined with card to bring them level with the leather.


This isn't something that's always done in bookbinding. In fact, more often than not, it's not done. There's something to be said for the tactility of the ridges on the boards from the covering material. But it does make the book sleeker and neater, and is used mostly for very expensive, special books, which these are.


None of the books are quite finished yet. There are still spine labels to apply, plus blind tooling on the covers and gold tooling on the spines. Here's Joe doing some of the blind tooling.


The rest of today Chris and I spent making some of the lining pieces for the boxes. If I go in tomorrow, I'll be working more on lining the boxes, and possibly on putting down endpapers while Joe finishes the tooling.

And just for fun, here's a shot of the apple I had with my lunch. If you look closely, you can see that the seed on the left is about to sprout into a tiny apple tree. I felt a little bad eating it. Perhaps I should have saved the seed and tried to grow it. It could keep the tiny oak sapling I stole from the graveyard company.

Teensy Tiny Bookses

Well, so much for a good night's sleep. I've obviously got too many things on my mind. Oh well, after a full day's work with books, I might actually sleep tonight. Especially as several of the things I'm anxious about should be more or less resolved after today. Or maybe after tomorrow. Blarg.

Anyway. Way back when I had only been making books a short time, I used to make miniature book earrings and necklaces. They weren't too bad, but I wasn't really that good at bookbinding yet. Then I didn't make any for a long time. When I started at the printshop, one of the things we sold was tiny book jewelry that Joe made, which was naturally much nicer that the stuff I used to make. And because Joe had neither the time or the inclination to keep making them, I took over.



Since, then, I've added a few changes of my own. I accidentally cut a bunch of leather too small last time I was assembling the bits to make a batch, but decided I liked the smaller size, at least for the earrings. I might go back to the larger ones for necklaces after this batch. Then, because I have a big stash of glass and wood and horn and bone beads (I had some metal ones, too, but can't find them), I decided to fancy them up a little.



Obviously, I still need to work on the photography. I'm trying to decide if I want to do them as proper product shots on white, or if I prefer the more organic in-context shots. Or I guess I could do both. It would be nice to have an actual space where I can set up a product photo table, instead of shooting on my desk or on the back porch. No wonder the photos are iffy. Also a macro lens would help. The lens I have isn't too bad, but close-in shots work best when I stand back and zoom in, which means more light.

Joe also used to teach a continuing studies class on book jewelry, which he no longer has time for, since NSCAD has him teaching two credit classes and at least one other con ed class a semester. So he suggested I could teach the workshop, but that I could have it in his studio, thus avoiding having to give NSCAD a cut. That'll happen in the fall, probably closer to the holidays, to tempt people to take the class in order to make a gift for someone. Or something.

Anyway, book earrings are for sale on my Etsy and ArtFire shops. Necklaces will follow as soon as I find clasps I can live with.

So Sleepy

I was going to post a bunch of pictures, but then I looked at the clock and discovered the reason my vision was getting blurry. I have someplace to be tomorrow and I haven't been sleeping well for a couple of weeks (boy on vacation + beer = boy snoring and flailing in sleep = girl not sleeping very well), so I really should get into bed. But before I go, here's a handsome fellow I ran into in front of Superstore this afternoon:



He's a little out of focus--it was really hard to see the screen on my phone in the miraculous bright sunlight we had today. Still, I was able to get nice and close thanks to the little built-in macro lens on my iPhone case. Woo hoo! I love gadgets.

Edit: Warning: If you click on the photo it goes giant-sized. That's what I get for assuming a cellphone photo would be small. Too sleepy to fix it now, but I'll take care of it tomorrow. In the morning, maybe. Good night. It's resized now, so click away.

Updating and All That

Man, I really need to get my ass in gear. About the only thing I've been keeping up with is my deviantArt page. And Facebook. Evil, evil Facebook.

I ran across the very spiffy blog of an old friend (and ex-boyfriend) Tim Rast, and it looks like he's doing really well. I started making books around the same time as he started flintknapping, and his business is so far ahead of mine it's . . . um, I don't want to say "it's not even funny" but I can't think of a better phrase at the moment. I really need to do some real writing. I'm out of practice. Anyway, he always was way more focused than me. I've often wondered where I'd be now if I weren't so easily distracted. But whatever. Go look at his blog and be amazed. Fine work, that.

And it occurs to me that I really haven't been keeping those of my friends and family that still happen by here very up to date, and the whole purpose of this blog was to let everyone (mostly those of you far far away) know what I was up to. That and make a public record of my writing and art so I'd be shamed into working hard. I'm not sure that's worked.

That said, here are some updates, starting from now and working backwards. More or less.

Okay, actually starting from the future, because the first thing I'm going to write about is tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm off to work in the studio of my former teacher and mentor, Joe Landry. I've been helping out off and on for a big government project called "Democracy 250" which is a celebration of 250 years of democracy in Nova Scotia. To commemorate the event, they put together a big volume of reproductions of documents relating to the history of democracy in the province. And I do mean big. If I remember, I'll write down the dimensions tomorrow, but it's something in the range of 12 inches by 18 inches. Maybe? I'm not very good at estimating measurements. And about an inch and a half thick or thereabouts. So big. And heavy.

I'm not sure who did the compiling and note-making and design and all that for the book, but the 12 copies (plus one extra "proof" copy) were all printed by Image House using special water-based inkjet inks. The scanning is top-notch and the printing looks fantastic. Okay, it would look better if it was letterpress, but I'm a little biased. Inkjet printing always has that slight fuzziness around the edges where the ink seeps into the paper. I think the technical term is "dot gain" but I could be confusing my jargon. Anyway.

The paper was handmade by Papeterie Saint-Armand in Montreal. It's based on their Old Masters line (one of my favorite lightweight papers for both intaglio and letterpress), but it was actually made especially for this project, because the paper needed to be a little more opaque than their usual.

Once the printing was done, the sheets came to us. We had to fold and collate (actually, I missed out on most of that since at the time I was madly trying to finish Dawson Printshop jobs before they shut us down). Then we had to trim them to size, which only meant slicing off a little from three sides on the board cutter. Then collating again, because we were paranoid about something being out of order, which happened in the proof copy due to a printer error. Then I spent a rather long time poking the sewing holes. Then sewing.

I'm afraid I'm getting a little tedious here, and I wasn't even going to go into this much detail. But it's too late now.

Because the books were so large, we had to sew them on a sewing frame. It's just too hard to handle big books with six million tapes (actually, I think there were maybe seven tapes) without the support of a frame. I ended up doing almost all of the sewing, but I got to use Joe's conservation frame, which is designed to make it a whole lot easier to get your arm around the uprights and the text block than a conventional frame, which hasn't changed much since Victorian times. If I were any good at woodworking, I'd make up plans and build my own. It's not a complicated design. Alas, I make books, not tools. If I could make it out of eska board, it would be no problem.

After the sewing, Joe rounded and backed them all and began lining the spines. Joe did all the rounding and backing because he can do it at lightspeed. It would probably have taken me as long to do one as it took him to do six. Or more. After that, Chris (Dunnett) and I sewed the endbands. We used a three-colour pattern, which requires one to have three hands. Or so it seems. Luckily, endbands is something I'm actually pretty good at, so I managed with just the two hands I've got.

After that, Joe glued on the false bands and I cut and sanded them into a nice curve. Then I disappeared into some other work for a while and Chris stained the leather. Joe did the paring--each book took a whole calfskin, and each calfskin costs several hundred dollars. While my paring skills have improved considerably, there's no way I was going to put a knife to those skins.

Again, I was off doing something else when the books were covered and sprinkled. The binding style is Cambridge Panel Binding (click on that and you'll see a photo--the different tones in the leather are achieved by sprinkling more or less or no dye on different parts of the book). Today, Joe was planning to finish up the gold tooling.

Which is a really long-winded way of coming around to what I'm doing tomorrow. I'll be lining the insides of the boards with thin card to fill in the area not covered by the turn-ins of the cover leather. That way, you won't see the usual ridge when the endpapers are put down. Once the boards are all lined, then we'll put down the endpapers. After that, we've got to finish the boxes, as each very expensive book is being housed in its own protective box. The boxes are all done, but they need to be built up inside to custom-fit each book and lined with soft felt. Then they need to dry. I think the goal is to get the bulk of the work done by the end of Friday, so things can dry over the weekend. Then they'll take the books away Monday. Then we can get paid. Which, since the Dawson Printshop is closed and I'm out a job, is a very welcome thing indeed.

Because, of course, this is the month the car insurance is due. And the month I'm supposed to start repaying my student loans (if I believed in god, I'd be thanking him for interest relief right now). Also, there's next month's car payment, and the house insurance (or, rather, the tenant's insurace), credit card bills, etc etc etc. So getting paid is good.

But now I've gone on much longer that I intended and I didn't even include any pictures. So I'll stop now. But I think I'll immediately post again with some images of new work.

Wood Type (Article Published!)

So for the three (or fewer) of you still reading along . . .

I just had an article published at Handmade News: "Wood Type: A 19th Century Innovation Inspires 21st Century Design." It's an unpaid "guest columnist" article, but I've applied to be an actual paid columnist. If lots of people read my guest article, it just might make a difference when the editor is weeding through the huge pile of submissions she no doubt has in her inbox. So please read. If you know anyone interested in type or craft or the history of books, get them to read too. Pretty please? I really *really* want this job.

And for the sharp-eyed and sharp-brained, I do know that wood type isn't exactly a 19th century innovation. Or at least not a 19th century invention. In fact, some of the earliest type was wood (it just doesn't work that well at small sizes). What the real innovation in the 19th century was was a way of producing wood type quickly and easily in many sizes. And with the rise of consumer culture happening at the same time, advertising with big giant type exploded. Whoo!

The absolute hardest part of writing that article was keeping it web-short. There was soooo much I had to leave out. But I think I pulled it off. If you disagree (or even if you agree) do leave a comment, either here or (even better) on the article itself.

Now I'm off to write about PSPs. From super-old technology to super new technology. Technology is so cool. I love it all! Niko the techno-geek.

Sold!

Yeah, so the SteamBook on Etsy has sold. Already. Approximately 3 hours after listing (or possibly sooner--I didn't check until now). So far Etsy is winning over ArtFire, but this is not a scientific test. But now I need to go to the store for more paper . . . I might have just enough for one more book . . .

Aaaaaah!

That is both a scream of "too much to do" and a long sigh of relief.

SteamBook - The Quartermaster's Accountbook

The Quartermaster's Accountbook is the first in a series of pocket-sized blank notebooks inspired by Neo-Victorian Retrofuturism (aka Steampunk).

With one of our "SteamBook" notebooks and a fountain pen (or any other writing instrument you prefer), you'll always have a place to record your voyages extraordinaires, whether you travel by airship, locomotive or paddle steamer (or by Penny Farthing, though I wouldn't recommend pedaling and writing at the same time).


This 3 1/2 by 2 3/4 inch blank book has about 80 blank natural "parchment" bond paper pages and a suede leather cover made from recycled garments. The leather is lined with japanese kozuke paper for stability and laminated on the front and back with wood veneer. The closure is a lovely rusty old key, carefully sprayed with matte varnish to keep the rust from rubbing off. The binding is cross-structure and sewn with sturdy linen thread.


It's perfectly sized for your pocket and hand made to exacting specifications for durability and stylishness. Why use a cheap store-bought notebook that will fall apart the first time an air kraken attacks, when you can use the same make of notebook scribbled madly in by Mad Doctor Sophia Shallowgrave herself?

Available now at Etsy and ArtFire. More pictures on those sites and on deviantART.

Two Seconds of Fame

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed for an article on the closing of the Dawson Printshop. The article is now up on The Coast's website, or if you're in Halifax you can grab a paper copy (hypothetically until Wednesday next week, but they're free and sometimes disappear quickly). There's even a photo of me (in b&w in the print edition, but colour in the online version).

The State of the Dawson Printshop

Er, yes, it's been a while since I blogged. I had such good intentions of keeping up with it and all that. My plan, you see, was to start an almost-daily blog post about the goings-on at the Dawson Printshop. But then they shut us down. While I wasn't precisely depressed, I felt I needed to be away for a bit. So I spent some time working at home and with my book arts teacher Joe at his studio. But Thursday I went back to the shop to finish up a few things. And I was back again yesterday. I feel better now.

So the Dawson Printshop has "suspended operations." NSCAD is in debt for various reasons (the new Port Campus is apparently only one of several reasons). NSCAD seems to be really, really in debt, and taking cost-cutting measures all over the place. The Seeds student gallery was scrutinized, but apparently came close enough to breaking even on a regular basis that it was spared. The heat was turned off early (it's *still* freezing in the shop). The Dawson Printshop was given The Eye. Instructors and students and friends from the community rallied and wrote letters to the President of NSCAD. Vince, the co-manager who was still around (Carley having returned to BC at the end of her contract), prepared a projection that showed how we had steadily been increasing the amount of money coming in and would probably continue to do so in the months to come. In a bad economic climate we were getting pretty close to breaking even for the month, and we hadn't even been open a full year. We did our best and we did remarkably well selling an expensive luxury product (because digital reproduction is way cheaper than letterpress). In the end, the Powers That Be at NSCAD decided to "suspend operations."

There was talk of finding sponsors for us. There was talk of maybe opening again in a year (and starting all over from nothing as our clients would have moved on to other options, and our word-of-mouth promotion would have stopped spreading). A group of instructors got together and discussed. Even if the shop were never to re-open as a commercial concern, there really, really needs to be a technician in the shop, they concluded. If classes--letterpress, book arts, printmaking and design included--are to keep using the space, the equipment, the type, someone needs to be around to oversee things, to clean up, to help students. At least part time. So said instructors sent a recommendation to the school that this should be so.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed (metaphorically, of course). Vince has gone home to Ontario, but I think he's keeping his fingers crossed too, and so is Carley. So are a lot of people. Obviously I want there to be a technician because I want the job, but it's also because I love the Dawson Printshop. It's one of the main reasons I chose to stay on in Halifax (the other, of course, is a certain cute boy). I'm hoping that someone with the power to actually do something about it will realize the need for a technician and actually decided to hire one. I'm hoping that will be me. But even if it's not, at least the Shop will have someone there.

In the meantime, I'm loitering around, finishing up a few last things, like a couple of greeting card orders from local retailers. And I'll be taking on a few jobs myself. If I have to, I'll pay studio fees to the school. Otherwise, I'll just spend some time putting away (other people's) type, organizing, cleaning the presses and the space, and generally keeping things from descending into the chaos it could so easily become.

The Daswon Printshop is dead. Long live the Dawson Printshop.

What I'm Up To

Visit Artist Books 3.0

Made It

I hope I'm not getting in the habit of being not-quite-but-almost late with comics updates. Of course, I should have built up a bigger reserve of pages while I had the chance. Anyway. Pages 16 and 17 of The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring are now up. You get to see Aeryn in a dress.

Oh, and there are vote incentives now!
Vote for Aeryn and see one of the earliest sketches I did of her.
Vote for Fey and glimpse one of the denizens of Faery.
(And yes, you can vote for both.)

Not Quite Late

I almost forgot that Fey ran out of new pages last week. Oops!

Anyway, page 11 is now up.

This is Not an April Fool

Hmm. That title sounds rather more serious than I thought it would. Oh well.

The voting for TopWebComics has reset for a new month. I think last month Fey was in the 500s and Aeryn Daring was in the 700s. That's not too dismal, really, but means they probably didn't find any new readers via TopWebComics. Anyway, the point of this post is to say you can vote again. Also, I didn't point out last time that you can actually vote for as many different comics as you like, once per day. So you could vote for both Fey and Aeryn every day, plus any other comics you like. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, I have to go get ready to make some books. Need breakfast. And tea.

Vote for The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring.
Vote for Fey.

This time, I'll put up some cool incentives (but they're not up yet; I'll post here whent hey are).

I've Heard This One Before . . .

. . . but it's still pretty funny to see it in comic strip form.

Vote!

I signed up Fey and Aeryn Daring on Top Webcomics. You can vote for them. You can vote for them every day. So, er, if you *like* Fey, click here to vote. And if you like Aeryn Daring, click here to vote. When I'm less sleepy, I'll find something to put up as vote incentives. For now, you'll just have to be happy that it'll make me happy if you vote. Unless you like some other comic better, in which case you should vote for it instead.

More and More

It's Saturday and I'm being lazy. Again. I haven't slept well all week so I have this nagging too-tired headache and huge bags under my eyes. Aaaah! Zombie girl! Oh, wait, that's just me in the mirror.

Yeah, yeah. Whine. Oh poor me. Actually things are good. I wasn't completely lazy today. I did quick Photoshop work on some comic pages and uploaded them. So now Faerie or Bust is going to update daily until March 20. It seemed a little silly to only update weekly when it's several years old and was a 24-hour comic in the first place.

What else? Aeryn Daring updates tomorrow, assuming I get around to uploading the pages today. That's next on the list. I made a Facebook group for Aeryn Daring, but didn't invite anyone to join as a sort of experiment. It's here. Eventually I'll make one for Fey, too. Assuming this one goes well.

Umm . . . Posted the first three Fey covers on my DeviantArt page. Decided I need to teach myself how to make art using nothing but Photoshop after reading The Phoenix Requiem, a very lovely webcomic. Been reading a lot of webcomics in the last while. Trying to get ideas for promoting my own stuff. Also, there is some really, really fantastic storytelling out there for free. A lot of it I would happily pay for in print form.

Anyway, I think I am now just procrastinating and should get the next Aeryn Daring page ready to go before the boy gets home and distracts me. I'm not so hard to distract, after all. (Not that he does it intentionally. He's very good about leaving me alone when I'm busy.)

Oh yeah, we went to see Under the Sea in IMAX 3D. It was fantastic! (Even with Jim Carrey narrating--you hardly noticed it was him.) If you like ocean things, you must must must see this movie.

More Updates

If anyone is still reading this thing, there are new comics pages this weekend.

Fey updated yesterday, Faerie or Bust (a Fey-related 24-hour comic) updated today, and Aeryn Daring updates tomorrow (another 2-page spread!),

Things I Made

I just put a few images of things I've made in the last couple years on my deviantArt page.

I'll be adding more as I get around to photographing and organizing stuff. That should happen pretty quickly now, as I'm gearing up to list things for sale on Etsy. There will be books (blank journals and small-edition artist's books--I'm not quite ready to part with the one-of-a-kinds yet), prints (lithographic, intaglio and relief), photographs (a few actual darkroom-printed, but mostly digital prints from scanned negs, and a few all-digital), and some odds and ends of stuff.

Also, there's a new page of Aeryn Daring up today.

Oh yeah, and I'll be sending out belated holiday present art to a select few folks soon. As soon as I figure out to whom to send what and how to package it for shipping.

Update

New page today . . .

Some Kind of Milestone

I checked my comics' stats on Webcomics Nation a moment ago, and Fleeing Arcadia (an 8-page Fey short) has hit 500 views. Not only that, but The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring--which only went up on Monday--is at 100 views. Woo hoo!

So yeah, the seven-page Prologue of Aeryn Daring is up now (since Monday). A new page will appear next Monday (which means I had better scan it). Read it! (please . . .)



Also, the main Fey series, which I started posting a few weeks ago, is over 100 views now, while Faerie or Bust, a Fey-related 24-hour comic, hasn't reached 40 yet (but it's only been up a short time).

Oh yeah, and if you want to be notified when any of my comics update, you can sign up for the email notification list.

Comic Book Madness

Well, so far I've managed to spend most of the weekend fiddling around with comics, doing a bit of scanning, some organizing of my Webcomics Nation site, and lots of button, banner and logo making.


Also, as you may have guessed from the "a bit of scanning" comment above, I now have a working scanner. Futureshop had that scanner I've been wanting marked down--about $100 less than the original price, which makes it almost $200 less than the new price. And I had a FS gift card (thanks, Dad!). So I splurged. And now I can get to work on some photo projects as well as comics (and explain that weird grocery list I posted way back when). It's very exciting. I haven't actually scanned any photos yet, but I'll start soon. I need to have an application for the grad show in by mid-February, so I need to get at least that one image finished by then (that is to say, scanned and cleaned up and looking fabulous).

What I have been doing with the scanner is making some images for my new comic series, which will debut on Webcomics Nation tomorrow!! My aim is to do weekly updates, but I don't have a big store of completed pages like I do for Fey, so I don't know how long I can keep that up. The drawings are smaller than Fey drawings, though, and I seem to be able to do a two-page spread in about the same time as it would take me to do a single page of Fey, so there may be hope for the weekly schedule.

So yeah, look for it tomorrow.



(Typefaces in both logos are from the fabulous Scriptorium. (Except the text that says "Fey"--that's all me.) Yes, I even paid for them.)

I Always Thought I Was a Geek

Fey!

I'm finally getting around to posting comics online again, but I need a new scanner. My old one works just fine, but in an attempt to get the plug-in working with CS4, I discovered that I'm not sure it was ever working on this machine at all, and the drivers won't install. Not even the newest ones downloaded direct from Canon. Sigh.

So in the meantime, I'm moving Fey over to Webcomicsnation. You'll find all my stuff at http://www.webcomicsnation.com/feynico/ eventually. If you were hoping for new pages, sorry. For now I'm going to be reposting old pages once a week. When I get to the end of them, I'll hopefully have lots of new pages and a new scanner. I will finish this series eventually. I'm also working on a completely new series called The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring. I'm very excited about it. But again, nothing until a new scanner.

The scanner I have my eye on in the Epson Perfection v700 Photo (or the v750-M Pro, except it costs significantly more). Yes, it's very pricey (and I just noticed the price is $100 more than it was when I looked a few weeks ago--I thought the prices on tech were supposed to go down, not up), and it can't even scan anything bigger than 8 1/2 x 11, but it *can* scan negatives all the way up to 8 x 10. I have a crapload of medium format and 4 x 5 negs I want to scan and work with digitally, at least to put them on deviantArt and create a digital portfolio. So. I'll be looking for ways of making a bit of extra cash so I can buy this thing, starting with finally getting some stuff up for sale on Etsy. You'll find me at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6315023, but there's nothing there yet. First, I have to organize and photograph and acquire a postal scale to figure out how much it will cost to mail things.

Anyway, more soon.