A new addition and current favorite in my ever-growing collection of miscellany (that I’ve started painting), a set of cards with perforated pieces which can be put together to make a pair of standing reindeer, santa’s sled, a snowman and a christmas tree.
“We stopped by the hilly town of Ossining for a quick snack, when we saw this mural off of Main Street. Murals are fun and beautiful, and I wonder why there aren’t more in New York City, where most walls are either covered with advertising or childish spray-paint scribbles.”
We took a few photographs of the Ossining mural, came home, and as I was looking through the pictures, I thought of making a panorama-style journal, the perfect size and shape for drawing and writing a little longer before the page ends. So here it is, my new favorite journal because it’s brought about a big change in perspective.
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.
As cold weather days arrive, there’s something really alluring about black and white photographs. Maybe it’s the way the contrasts and tones stand out against the muted colors of everything around, maybe it’s because the chilly air carries with it a nostalgia for quieter, older scenes. Maybe it’s simply a change from the bright vivid colors of the summertime. So it is that the winter collection of Five and a Half begins with a series of new journals with black and white photographs, some taken recently and nearby, some taken years ago and faraway.
In the spirit of the upcoming holidays, Five and a Half will be giving $5.50 from each order of our new panorama-style journal, beacon mural, to Children for Children, a nonprofit organization. And, as our way of saying thank you to all of you for supporting us so that the journals have grown to what they are now, we’ve lifted (yup, deleted) the shipping fees on U.S. orders and pared down international fees to just $5. We’re looking forward to a wonderful winter of family, friends, and really good times. Thank you, and cheers!
Before I made my first journal, I’d actually attempted to launch a line of cut-paper cards for weddings and baby announcements. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing, I made zero sales on my etsy store, and then the journal-making came along so all remnants of my cards were ushered into a shoebox and put away. Hopefully I’ll have enough know-how to get those rolled out someday. In the meantime, I’m perfectly content looking at the amazing work that others have done, and here are some of my favorites:
a gallery of beautiful custom work at Full Circle Press, Elum’s twist on the classics, simple and elegant invitations by moontree letterpress, old school elegance at Bella Figura and Black Pearl Press, and some fun and quirk from both ess & jae and Cheree Berry (who is flying solo after designing for Kate Spade). And when in the mood for really embellished ornate designs, Dauphine Press. For the little ones (well, the parents of) fun custom invites from Bumble Ink, and children’s stationery that looks even nicer than the ones grown-ups have, from Felix Doolittle.
We’re continuing on our quest to have Five and a Half journals available in at least one brick and mortar store in every state (and perhaps, eventually, every city). You can now pick up a Five and a Half journal at Cog and Pearl, Composition, Edith and Edna, and the museum shop of the Laumeier Sculpture Park. The journals are making it to cities on our must-visit list faster than we can travel!
Drum roll please. I’d like to debut my collaboration with Photojojo: a video tutorial and two limited-edition, exclusively-for-Photojojo handmade journals.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves: click here to see the photo journal video tutorial (scroll to the middle of the page and click “play”), and here to see the exclusive edition handmade journals (if you like them, get your hands on them fast before they’re all gone!).
It’s been a long time in the making, with lots of hard work and preparation from everyone involved (i.e. they had to watch my video over and over to edit it nicely ~ while I can’t even bear to watch the final version once because seeing myself talking on screen feels weird) and they put so much time and energy into taking gorgeous product shots and writing up great specs. A a big round of applause and thank you to everyone at Photojojo!
Journal Sighting: For those of you who would like to get your hands on the illustrated style of Five and a Half journals (which have been discontinued), Kelly of Relish at Home in Berkeley, California still has a small stockpile of them available. You can’t order with Relish online, but if you e-mail her at info(at) relishathome(dot)com or call 1.877.3.relish and let her know which journal you’d like (describe it to her), she’ll let you know how to go about paying for it, then she’ll wrap it up and send it over to you (so you can still get one even if you don’t live anywhere near her store). Thanks again to all of you who wrote to me asking if there are any left, hope you manage to find the ones you want at Relish!
Elsewhere: For those of you who tune in to Hear, Hear, the latest installment is an interview with the very insightful Rob Walker, writer of the New York Times Magazine column Consumed, who says, and I quote: “It’s easy to let stuff drift by, the whole trick is to notice.” Agree? Well then, read on…
The illustrated journal cover series will no longer be available in the Five and a Half store. As a smallscale bookmaking and design studio, the amount of time and materials I have on hand is limited, so it’s not really practical for me to keep making the older illustrated style journals while large orders for the photo-cover journals are rolling in back-to-back. I’m sad to be discontinuing the illustrated line, it took so much time and effort to draw each of them, but then I remember, I’m on a quest to make better, sturdier, and more functional journals, so onward I must go! If you do want to purchase one of the illustrated journals, Greenwich Letterpress, the Trunkt store in Tribeca, and Relish at Home may still have a few left.
You can see a gallery of all my past Five and a Half journal series over at Flickr. I feel like a parent beaming at baby pictures, or something like that.
