Sketchbook culling

I cleaned my studio during Hurricaine Irene. I think I am one of very few people lucky enough to say that their home looked better after the storm. One of my organization attempts involved gathering all my journals/ notebooks/ sketchbooks/ listbooks from around the house and putting them in one place. Oh what a mighty pile of paper that was! I would have guessed I'd been using about fifteen notebooks (which I knew was a little extreme) but when I gathered all of them up, I found I'd been rotating a whopping TWENTY SEVEN! That is embarrassing.

In an effort to remedy this craziness, I retired a bunch to a box in the closet. Letting go was hard to do because most still had usable pages left. I also hid ten of them for future use since I'd only drawn on a handful of pages from each. I'm down to a reasonable eight.

Cleaning takes me a very long time because I focus on unimportant details. For example, when I found a postcard that featured Arnold Schwartzenegger as the Terminator in my pile of rubble on the floor, I stopped cleaning and set to finding the perfect frame and cut a matt board for it. Meanwhile my floor is still a disaster. That happens constantly.

So, when I was organizing my books, I had to look through each one before sorting it. I was reminded of so many projects I'd forgotten about! I also pulled out a couple good doodle pages like the one above.

That reminds me of this article about how doodling about the subject matter you are learning is a good tool for absorbing information. http://io9.com/5834081/people-who-doodle-learn-faster When I go back to school, my notebooks will be full of on topic illustration instead of my usual penises and dinosaurs and food. What?

Gocco box journals

I mentioned yesterday that I'd made a gift for someone from a used Gocco box and today I felt like showing it off.

The fact that Gocco supplies have gone out of production has led me to not just be a hoarder of supplies for future use but also a saver of spent ones. I love the bold yellow boxes that the Gocco bulbs come in and I've been flattening them out and holding on to them for a few months. I am so glad my pack-rat ways paid off when I had the idea to have them turned into spiral bound notebooks!

I think they look pretty slick and cost less than $4 each to bind at the nearby copy shop. I also used the sides of the boxes to make bookmarks and the tab ends as stickers,

Of course I definitely couldn't part with the burned out flashbulbs that die two by two with every edition either. Until I think of something else, I've been storing them in some glass jars on the shelf above my desk. Maybe if I run out of jars I'll string them up on our Christmas tree.

Celebratory Giveaway!

I feel like celebrating and sharing today. I'm going out to breakfast, donning my special yellow heels and having my very first giveaway! I'm offering up one of my proud llama journals and a couple other surprises to anyone who leaves a cheerful comment. I'm thinking of this as a kind of trade because I'd really like it if the comment submissions contained a link to something that may make me happy. In return, maybe you'll get something special in the mail! The odds are very good here.

I'll pick a winner on Monday. Please make sure your comment contains an internet gem and enough information so I can track you down and send you some goodies!

Clouds and llamas

Remember when I made those patches with llamas and bunnies on them? Well, I had planned on making the patches to give away as little bonuses with purchase of a print but they turned out to be the most popular design I've made. I thought it would be lame to start selling something that was a freebie so I used the design on some Moleskine notebooks and have decided to sell those. I think they are just more substantial and I love Moleskines.

I just finished listing them on Etsy as well as my newest print, "Coolest Cloud". The shop is filling up quickly. I can't believe I almost have a full page already!