I never thought about having models holding up my journals to take product shots, the way that t-shirts are often shown. It seems like that might be a good idea though ~ I’m loving this picture that the guys at Coudal took of the journals I sent to them for the Coudal Swap Meat. Leave it to these design gurus to know how to make things look good!

Since none of our friends have kids that are old enough to properly hold up a journal (they’re all still in the diaper-bundled gurgling stage), I’ll have to settle for getting our friends to model with the journals instead. Grown-ups just don’t look as cute, but I suppose they’ll have to do for the time-being!

{If you’d like to participate in the Coudal Swap Meat, there’s still time — they’ve extended the deadline till the end of April — find out more here. I can’t wait to see what I’ll be getting in the mail!}

Two of the three new journals in our spring/summer line, featuring some stunning photographs of west-coast suburbia (printed in fade-proof ink on canvas paper covers), now available in the store, just in time for Five and a Half’s first birthday.

March. Acrylic on canvas, 16″ x 24″ 2007.

I dabbled with this painting much longer than I needed to so I’m glad it’s finished. I’m ready to start anew on a fresh canvas. It’s a cloudy, rainy spring day here in Brooklyn so the light shining through the windows casts a light blue hue on everything.

On the right, a preview of the new spring/summer line of Five and a Half journals. I won’t say any more about them for now ~ they’ll be in the store on Monday!

With my photo journal tutorial receiving quite a bit of buzz online, I’ve been encouraged to submit it to JPG magazine. If you haven’t heard of it before, JPG is a magazine, website, and community that highlights the work of nonprofessional photographers all over the world. It’s filled with stunning pictures, great tips, articles, stories and tutorials on anything and everything related to photography.

My photo journal tutorial is now on JPG’s website, and the next step, and this is where I’d need your help dear readers, is to accumulate a significant number of votes (ah, what a democratic way to decide if something’s worth printing!) so that it’ll be included in the magazine’s upcoming print issue. It’d be so cool if the tutorial makes it into the next printed issue — then even more people would know how simple it is to take a couple of extra prints, a pile of papers, and make their very own photo journal!

If you liked my photo journal tutorial, please cast your vote for it’s publication. It takes less than a minute, and even though you’ll have to sign up, if you like photography, then JPG is definitely worth your time. Thanks for your support!

After a whirlwind of packing, moving and unpacking, we are in our new home. I love the sunlight here. The husband recounts a few of his thoughts from the move, and shares a few of the random things floating around in his head here.

February. Acrylic on Canvas, 20″x28″ 2007. 

In memory of my little Pepper (August 12, 1994- February 22, 2007). 

Everything outside is lit up with the crisp winter sunlight. It’s so pretty that I keep getting lured into writing up a list of errands to run, thinking it’ll be a good break from making books in the studio and I’ll be taking a nice walk in fresh air. On the contrary, the minute I step outdoors, my nose and ears are nipped by the sharp winter cold! Brrrr!

So with outdoor time kept to a minimum, I’m sitting here thinking about what other interesting things I could make with the supplies I have around me. There are so many fabulous tutorials floating about on the internet that I’ve bookmarked (I’ll put a few of those up in a separate post later on), and I’ll definitely give some of them a try.

Here’s one of my own that I’d like to share. Remember those photo journals that I made last season which completely sold out within just a few weeks? You could just as easily make one with your own photographs!

Click here, and have fun!

And, when you’re finished, if you’d like to show us what your photo journal looks like, put a link to your image in the comments section of this post!

The latest addition to our home is Humpty Dumpty, an adorable stuffed egg with with lanky limbs and a contagious smile. Humpty is made of (thoroughly cleaned) reclaimed fabrics by textile artist Judy Geagley.

We first “met” Humpty at the Greenjeans store, where Amy and Jae seem to always have a knack for finding the coolest handcrafted things. Now that their online shop is open, you don’t have to live in Brooklyn to get Humpty, or the many other goodies that you can find at Greenjeans!

(Note: we are also the proud owners of the little green elephant (made from a recycled sweater) pictured above.)

This time last year, before Five and a Half was started, I was taking my first bookmaking class at the Center for Book Arts, and a painting class at the School of Visual Arts. My husband (boyfriend-at-the-time) bought me a book — Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, a collection of Thiebaud’s best paintings. I went from knowing next to nothing about Thiebaud (except that he was the guy who drew cakes), to spending hours studying the way he composed his pictures, arranged his subjects, chose his colors, and added those thick, standoffish layers of paint.

I didn’t have much time to look through my Thiebaud book during the rest of last year, because I started Five and a Half and it kept me much busier than I’d expected. It wasn’t until just a couple of months ago, when I decided that it was time to pick up my pencil and start drawing again, that I thought of his work.

So, it seems quite fitting to start the new line of Five and a Half journals with a tribute to my favorite painter, Wayne Thiebaud, in my version of one of his most famous paintings, Cakes. And that led to another Thiebaud-inspired cover design, Seasonings.

I’ve got a handful of other book cover illustrations in progress right now, and those will be up in the shop shortly, so stay tuned!

I spent a lot of time last year marching about the city (and neighboring states) collecting rescued papers to take back to the studio, chop up, and rearrange into pages of the handmade, recollected journals. From old architectural drafts to the aged contents of school art closets, I was trying to get my hands on all types of old papers. I enlisted the help of friends, family, even strangers, but still my supply of papers dwindled too quickly as I kept making them into journals for all the people who ordered them.

After lots and lots of thinking and researching, I brought in the sugarcane alternative papers. These papers are made from bagasse, the sugarcane stalk that remains after sugar has been extracted. Unlike trees, which take decades to grow (and minutes to chop down and evict the hundreds of little creatures that live in them), sugarcane is highly sustainable in large quantities, with bagasse simply being the residue of what already is an agricultural staple.

By using sugarcane papers in the new journals, I can keep making new books while showing that there is a practical alternative to traditional paper — we can still have new papers to write and draw on, without harming a single tree!