At the time of this writing, my social media break has lasted just about a month. Currently, I don’t miss it. I had watched the Netflix special a while back about how we are the product of the big corporations, and it had me thinking, but I still didn’t take the true social media break I wanted to. I fell back for a bit, but then felt like it wasn’t the right time in my business to do that.

Out of the blue this summer, I signed out of all my instagram accounts and deleted the app from my phone. I won’t mislead you though - I am now frequenting Pinterest instead. Maybe I am just kidding myself, but it sure feels a lot healthier. To me, it’s a place of ideas and has already helped me tackle some personal projects I didn’t know how to start. I find so much inspiration for my craft, parenting, mental health, meal planning, and sometimes I just like to look at beautifully designed rooms with a retro-modern spin. Oh, and the IKEA hacks are a must-binge.

Once I got through even a week of my ‘no social summer’, it felt like my mind had more space to explore other thoughts rather than how I’m ranking on some post, and overanalyzing why a post didn’t do as well as I felt it should. Wasn’t it aesthetically pleasing? Did I use the wrong hashtags? If so, it’s too late and too silly to repost it again with a new set. Is anyone even seeing my stuff? Where is everyone?

So many more thoughts pass through my mind about it, but I don’t want to spend the whole post on it. You probably get it.

Working on the new journal styles

The great thing is, I found time to clean out my studio, and start brainstorming how to move into the next phase of my stationery business.

First draft of the wire journals. Shown in Butterscotch bookcloth

The picture gives away almost everything, but not quite!

I’m not showing here what’s on the inside but there will be blank, dot grid, graph, and lined paper as well as a simple task list I came up with that works well for my ADHD brain.

Many of us are experiencing adult ADHD, so I am hoping everyone can find the task list useful once it is released in the shop.

This first draft shown in a Butterscotch book cloth came out really well.

It is made using standard 8.5 x 11 sheets (covers are slightly larger) because it was the easiest size to work with for the materials I had and it caused less waste overall.

In the beginning, I plan to go with this standard letter sized notebook and will eventually expand once I figure out the least wasteful way to go smaller.

After about three tries at the time of this photo of the completed journal, here are a few things I learned and need to work on perfecting:

• Need a bigger wire binding. The one in the photo only allowed me to include 25 sheets of the paper I intend to use for the journals. Not enough.
• Need to source bookcloth. There are a few distributors I looked into, but with COVID apparently still affecting stock levels, I had to search for a full day to find a potential supplier with both enough variety and inventory
• Need to choose my standard color options and which will be special releases
• Needed to adjust the design for the task list option that I plan to offer, positioning margins, etc - had to print a few to get it right
• The diagonal corner cuts shown in the work in progress photo were not right. Fixed those

Why wire binding?

After making the stab bound books for about 4 years, I realized that even though people really loved them once they saw them, they have their own market. They work for specialized/indie storefronts who source artistic work.

At times, I wonder if I did a disservice to myself by offering too many fabric options over the years. People were possibly confused on if the product was for them. Not sure but as I have recently come to understand how too many choices are actually difficult for my own brain, it was time to think about how I can bring my personal experience into my business.

This is the only way I’ll continue to love what I do.

It had been long overdue to find a way to offer a lay-flat product, but held back because it felt like so many people were already doing that. Finally I said to myself that this doesn’t matter. There is room for me, too!

The fun part will be the idea that Artisaan can become that shop for everyone.

Not ‘for men’ and ‘for women’

We all need a place to note and explore our thoughts, right?

Our new wire bound notebooks have a planned first drop of August 2022. We hope you are just excited as we are!