Everyone has asked — what are you going to do when you are working at school any more — and my answer has always been extremely vague, because (a) I don’t want to give away all of my secrets too soon and (b) I haven’t exactly known. That’s partly because when I announced that I was leaving my job at school, I still had 6 months left to go before the end. Now that summer is here, though, I’m ready to make some progress on my goals. The first of those is starting an email newsletter. In theory, email is dead. But also in theory, if I want to have an art business, I need an email newsletter? It’s all very confusing.

So with the introduction of my first collection of handmade books, I decided to start a newsletter. I will also be posting the newsletter info here on my website. Here’s a link to the very first of what I’m calling Suzanne’s Useful and/or Funny Newsletter. And the sign-up form is below, in case you want to get these directly in your mailbox.

Newsletter #1

I will make no promises about any sort of regular posting, because I seem to instantly rebel against myself when I do that. So maybe I’ll post andmaybe I won’t.

I’m posting today because I’m finally getting around to fulfilling one of my artistic goals, which is to start offering some of the things I make for sale. I will be posting a batch of handmade journals on my Instagram page on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, but I thought I’d post about them here, too, since Instagram is not forever and maybe my website will be.

This set of books is the Map Your Dreams collection. The inspiration was a pile of discarded library books, a huge roll of packing tape, and a roll of black and white map paper that I have had for years and never quite known what to do with.

I made the first book for my current art journal. And then I made another and added page embellishments. And then suddenly I had a huge piece of the paper spread out to paint for covers for 6 more books. As I painted and cut and stitched, I was thinking about maps and how l often I wish I had a map for my life – and at the same time acknowledging that I would probably rebel against the map anyway (because that’s how I roll). I thought about what I would want in a journal and how I might see other people using the books I was making. I continue to think about little extras I could share with ideas and inspiration for using these books.

While all of the books are similar, they have their differences – the biggest is stuffed full of nothing but watercolor paper. Three are almost identical, with the same quantities of a variety of interesting papers.

I decided not to embellish the pages of more than the one book that I will be giving away, but I will be sending along plenty of collage pieces to get you started if that’s your thing. Each book will come with a packet that contains leftover cover paper, a length of the original unpainted map paper, sticker paper that I stamped with some of my own hand carved stamps, and a travel map of Iowa that you can cut up and use for collage. Or you can come visit me if you’d like. I circled my home town on the map.

One of the books is available as a giveaway, going on now (May 30, 2021) through Wednesday, June 2, 2021 at 5:00pm CDT. The other 6 books will be available for purchase starting at 4:00pm CDT on Tuesday, June 1, 2021.

See the post below for all of the details. If you are reading this post on my website, you can earn a special bonus 10 entries by commenting ON THIS POST on my website with an emoji of your choice. This is a super secret bonus that isn’t mentioned on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Suzanne Earley (@suzanne_earley)

Hopefully it won’t be so long before I post again.

It was awful and amazing.

I was going to learn about coding (re: the last thing I posted in March), but that fizzled and I found myself knitting. And eventually, making art in my art journals. And I think there might have been some cross stitch in there, too.

I have a really great stack of finished journals (and I’ll be honest, sometimes finished means I decided I was done, even if there were pages left in the book):

I have a smaller (but no less worthy) stack of journals that I made or just started working in towards the end of the year:

And I finished 9 knitting projects. Two shawls that were started in previous years, everything else was started and finished in 2020:

One of the best things I made this year is my Holiday Joy Journal. I started working in this book on November 21, 2020, and I finished it yesterday. It has a mishmash of all kinds of art and journaling and I have flipthroughs of it on Instagram (sped-up, no talking, 3 minutes) and YouTube (real-time flipthrough with commentary, 22 minutes).

Instagram:

YouTube:

So enough about 2020, I’m looking forward with cautious optimism to 2021. I might even start blogging again on a regular basis!

While I’m not at home full time (yet — our district office is still open for the time being), but I am always looking for new things to do and try and I guess I might as well try reaching out and sharing what I’m doing, too.

I blew through the learning challenges of the Responsive Web Deisgn Certification in a day and am now working on the web design projects.

First up is a Tribute Page — I chose the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. The way the challenge works, you have a set of “user stories” you have to fulfill — which are all code based. The content and styling of the page are entirely up to you.

You can check out my page on Codepen.io: https://codepen.io/suzanneearley/full/RwPyomm

You can also start learning how to code on your own at freecodecamp.org — but beware they are experiencing high traffic today (what a surprise!) and you might have trouble until they increase their capacity.

Our local school library has withdrawn all of their National Geographic magazines from their collection and I couldn’t bear to see them just go to recycling. But I can’t use them all, so I’m hoping to find homes for them, you just pay shipping.

I have so many right now that I’m not going to post an exact inventory, just a general idea. Make a request, I’ll let you know if I have the specific month and year you are looking for and I’ll keep the list updated as my stock depletes.

1950s

I appear to have all of the following years:

• 1955
• 1957
• 1958
• 1959

1960s

I appear to have all of the following years:

• 1962
• 1963
• 1964
• 1965
• 1966
• 1967
• 1968
• 1969

1970s

I have all of the following years and most appear to have duplicates of each month

• 1971
• 1972
• 1973
• 1974
• 1975
• 1976
• 1977
• 1978
• 1979

1980s and 1990s

I currently only have 1988 and 1989 in my home, but if anyone is interested in the 80s or 90s, I can get most of those years/months as well.

Shipping Costs

I can fit up to 22 magazines in a USPS Flat Rate Medium Box. In the US, that would be $14.35. (For comparison, media rate would be $12.11 for that many and I’d have to find boxes, which I’m not crazy about doing, unless there’s a huge demand)

I can fit 3 in a USPS Flat Rate Envelope. That would be $7.35.

I can up to 3 in a catalog envelope. Sent via Media Mail, that would be up to $5.00, depending on how many you wanted.

I provide the above information as estimates, I would provide exact shipping quotes when we finalize how many you actually want me to send!

I accept PayPal for the shipping costs, my PayPal info will be shared with you privately. You are also welcome to send a check, but I will wait to send your magazines until after I have received payment.

How to Claim

Interested in some magazines? Send me an email with your mailing address and the MONTHS and YEARS you are specifically interested in. I will look at my inventory and get back to you! I work full time, so it may take me up to 24 hours to get back to you, please be patient with me!

suzanne at suzanneearley dot net

Please do not comment on this post, I would prefer you email me directly.

Here’s the 2nd half of February’s color assemblages. Some of these stretch the idea of a single color, but it’s my art, I can do what I want!

Every so often, I would pull it out, think about it, and then stick it back on the shelf, still not sure how I was going to fill the entire thing with MY ART. Fast forward to the month before the mailing deadline and I had to do SOMETHING. I was laying in bed one night when the two ideas came together in my head that became the journal that I put most of together in a single weekend. It has taken me another 10 days to finalize it, but I finished it this weekend, and I am so excited about it!

Idea Number 1 — Pop-ups

I adored the March Daily creative challenge at CreativeBug — it was all about altered books. I especially liked the pop-up/interactive prompts and I knew I wanted to learn more ways to incorporate pop-ups into my artwork.

Idea Number 2 — Kindness

My word of the year is Kindness — and as I contemplated doing a book of pop-ups for my sketchbook project book, it occurred to me that I could illustrate a selection of random acts of kindness via the pop-up techniques I wanted to learn.

The book

Here’s a 2 minute video of the me flipping through the whole book. Below the video, I’ve included my list of resources, with links. Finally, I’m including pictures of each spread. Because the pages are interactive and do actually pop up, I encourage you to watch the video, to get the full effect.

Flipthrough video

Resources

• CreativeBug — Altered Book Daily Challenge (subscription site)
• Little Green Box
• Random Acts of Kindness
• The Spruce Crafts
• Origami Instructions
• Red Ted Art
• youtube.com/user/realasianbeauty (words on the fold)

We finished up the blind contour drawings on the 31st. I absolutely loved doing these. Drawing without looking at the page is very freeing — you know it’s going to be wonky, just by virtue of doing it blind, so it doesn’t matter if you “can’t” draw — the point is to just capture the idea of the thing. To pay attention to drawing what you SEE, not what you THINK it should look like. This is a great warm-up and I need to remember to do it more often.

Last few days of January

February through the 12th

The new month has us creating color assemblages. As with last month, interpretation of the theme was left very wide open. I’ve been experimenting a little with how exactly I create these. I haven’t really settled on a plan and probably won’t.

I have managed to get everyone of these done on the actual day! I don’t always post them the same day, because I have to wait for morning light. It’s hard to believe it’s the middle of February already.

I’m continuing with my daily art practice, this month is all about blind contour drawings. (You can see all of the posts about the daily artwork here, though as of this writing it’s just this and the 1st week).

I’ve been experimenting with adding color and have also played with the kind of pen I use — the most recent days have been a brush pen, giving some variation to the line quality. The drawings are inherently wonky and imperfect and it’s very good practice for drawing what you SEE, not what you think it should look like.

I don’t have a plan of what I’m going to draw for these, just whatever catches my eye for the day. The little toys I’ve collected have been particularly good subjects.

Here’s week 2:

Here’s week 3:

And week 4:

Just a few more days of January, which is absolutely shocking. I have really enjoyed these daily drawings, but I think I’m glad it’ll be time for a new theme come February 1st. I don’t know what that is yet, but Riet has been hinting that it’s going to include color.