I spend an enormous amount of time combing through our photographs and making test prints. Sometimes a picture will seem like a good cover design, but when I actually fold it into the form of a journal, it doesn’t look right. It might be an image I like intially, but grow tired of looking at really quickly. Or it may stand alone perfectly but look odd next to other journals in the series (I have to think about how they’ll look as a group sitting on a shelf at one of my lovely retailers’). It’s during the long afternoons of test printing that some less-noticed pictures find their way to the top of the pile, to become cover designs that work perfectly for the journals.

I still have many favorites amongst the test prints that don’t make it into the final Five and a Half collection, and what good is a cover without pages to write and draw in, so I’ve made a bunch of saddle-stitched booklets using the test print covers and of course, sugarcane and recycled paper. The booklets (measuring a easily-pocketed size of 3 1/2 by 5 inches) come in a set of three, with 1 black and white and 2 full-color covers, and they’re now available in the store.

October 16th, 2007