monday at 9 pm EST at the etsy virtual labs. be there or be a four-sided polygon with equal sides and equal angles ( {4} ).

also flying rodent + house != fun, but it pretty damn funny. or hysterical at the very least…

Labels: books, etsy, facts

from the BESTbooks blog:

Q: What is your real name vs. your screen or nickname?

A: hello, my name is meredeth, and i am afraid of the shift key. (^_^) my etsy name is yatsu, which is a japanese word you use to refer to someone when you don’t want to be terribly polite to them. like, Jerk or Turd. (^_^) my etsy shop name is notuboc, which is a combo of the old english words for Useful and Book. wow, could i GET any NERdier?

Q: When or how did you get into book arts?

A: as a writer, i was always fondling those fancy journals at the bookstore, but none of them was exactly perfect, so i decided to take matters into my own hands. and now look at my evil empire! bwahahah! … …

Q: How long have you been making books now?

A: three years? something like that. i guess i made my first book like five years ago, but then i didn’t make anything for a while.

Q: What kinds of books (whether format or subject matter) are your favorite to make these days?

i like learning new bindings, and right now, i’m expirementing with series. next up is a group of nine books, each with the same kind of covers, but different papers and different exposed bindings. time to bust out the sewing frame!

Q: What kinds of books would you like to make in the future?

A: i’d like to try books with strong themes, maybe a series of books inspired by celebrities or something like that. more belgian eyelet binding would be refreshing, too.

Q: Is there a particular kind of bookbinding technique that you’d really like to learn or try?

A: i’d like to learn some historical bindings, like guttenberg-era.

Q: Do you sell your books at local arts and crafts fairs?

A: i did this past year, but it was pretty much bust. of course, it was bust for almost everyone i met, so i think i’ll try it again this year, but i hope to have more of a Product Line for the shows than the patented Artistic Mish Mash i purvey on etsy. (^_^)

the other thing i’m trying is bead weaving. i’ve done a couple of things (which my sister has kindly agreed to list in her etsy shop as yatsu’s consignment) but i’ve decided that these things are far too … Normal. so i have decided to bead the periodic table of the elements. that’s right, the whole thing. to the left you can view a prototype hydrogen. it is, by the way, approximately one inch wide and one and a quarter inches long. it will soon be for sale. i designed a whole font complete with numbers and now i’ll be spending my extra hours at work making pattern for all 118 elements. NERd points +1000! so far i have helium and boron done. they’re really even more adorable than hydrogen. i had to make an emergency bead store run (god i love that phrase) after work so i could get the right colors, and i very nearly over spent myself, but it will be totally worth it when i confront my cubicle mates with my undying NERdness tomorrow.

oh yeah, speaking of NERd, i bought a shirt that has the shape of pi, all filled in with as many digits of pi as would fit. gregory called me Queen Dorkus. i told him thank you. (^_^)

Labels: etsy, facts, NERd

or, Financing Your College Education, the Hard Way.

not that there IS an easy way. even the English Department head was like, It’s getting prohibitive. i was like, no, it IS prohibitive. every other part of this process was Easy Breezy. signing up for classes, getting my OSU internet ID reactivated, meetings with two seperate advisors in two seperate departments/buildings, including the headache of on-campus parking w/out a permit AND being late to both meetings: two days. could’ve been one, except for a meeting the english lady had that day. getting financing? two days just to get ahold of the financial aid department, only to find out that they don’t offer aid for people taking less than six credit hours (me? taking 5. that’s right) plus one day to call my bank and get declined for a loan. now it’ll be another two days trying out cosigners in the BLIND HOPE that one of them will qualify me for half the loan i wanted, but as long as eventually i have enough to pay for my classes, i will have to be satisfied. living expenses? well, i don’t know what i’m going to do with that, but i guess i’ll have to get over it, because i’ll be lucky to pay for classes, let alone anything else. (X_X)

moving on. i’ve listed a new pretty over on etsy. the picture to the right i actually took by accident (as evidenced by the fact that i would never in a million years allow something that blurry past my initial round of deletions) but i love the angle so much, i decided to let it pass. also, it’s probably the most accurate shot i got of that stupid grey. it’s like grey, but a green grey, and if i can get the gret right, the cinnamon color is wrong, or they’re both wrong, or SOMETHING, (breath meredeth, breath!) so i decided to leave it. also, i believe notuboc will be having a sale the final two weeks of May. i have finally figured out how to do free shipping in such a way that people will no longer have to wait for an invoice, thus preventing people from accidentally paying me for shipping they did not need to pay for, so in anticipation of getting up the money to pay for classes, May 18 – 31 will be free shipping season at notuboc. enjoy~

Labels: etsy, facts, school, stupid

well, it’s decided. i’m going back to class. OSU, specifically. i went to sign up for some courses at CSCC, thinking i could complete my GEC requirements as a sort of warm-up to OSU, but it turns out, after about an hour of figuring out precisely what i needed to take vs what i had already taken (an extra 21 hours of course work taken for no point! no problem! (T_T) ), that columbus state does not actually offer any classes that i need to take. it turns out what i do need to take amounts to precisely six (6) courses. five english major courses and one GEC. that’s two quarters. of course, it won’t end up being two quarters, coz i do have to work occassionally, but still. SIX COURSES! so i’ve decided that i am going back to class, and i will bloody well graduate god damn it. if i have to storm OSU’s doors with an entire ream of paper work, i WILL be graduating. now, to call OSU and initiate what will be a MAJOR paperwork SHUFFLE so that i might be admitted this summer. i’m not even sure if that’s possible, frankly, but i sure as hell will be trying it. (^_^)

Labels: facts

hey hey! does yatsu have pictures that she said she’d have!? well, yes, but only for one of two items.

this is the young indiana jones journal. i’ve finished mussing it up, i’ve done as many inserts as humanly possible, no thanks to the non-informative internets, and now it gets to sleep while my customer prostitutes himself for the money to buy it. (^_^) poor dude, i understand how being broke is.

the other thing i would like to show is this ->

this is my book for the BESTbooks World Book Day Challenge. the challenge was to come up with something inspired by Cervantes and Shakespeare, who, in a strange twist of the calendar, died on the same date, but not the same day. england was still using the Julian calendar, while Spain had joined the modern world in the Gregorian calendar, so both calendars marked the day as April 23, 1616, but Shakespeare actually died ten days after Cervantes. thus endeth today’s NERd Lesson. UNESCO took that as their cue to make the day World Book Day, and we at BESTbooks took that in turn as our cue to make up a challenge. this was my first try at hand made headbands, and i used a period-accurate technique that was actually pretty simple. i’m thinking hand made headbands are my new favorite technique. the cover is fabric kindly donated by my mother (remnants from a pillow she made me – that pillow? is a ROCK and i love it.) and the endpapers are (definitely not period accurate) cardstock. the text block is unlined heavy white sketch paper, and there are… 200 pages to scribble your inspired thoughts all over! check it out on the BESTbooks blog~

Labels: facts

that’s right ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a long while since i had a photo dump, so here we go!

first up on the list is ACEOs. for those of you uninitiated, ACEO stands for artists cards, editions and originals, or some such thing. we also call them ATCs, artist trading cards. basically, a 2.5 by 3.5 inch piece of anything you choose, upon which you perpetrate Art. my sister is making an ACEO at this very moment inspired by ookami, and it is pretty much smex. it’s wire and beads on a wooden frame. in the shape of a sakura tree. it’s pretty much mini wire sculpture. so you can perpetrate whatever sort of Art you desire, and it doesn’t even have to be 2d. i love these things, in case you couldn’t tell. (^_^) i’ve had a crap ton of the things hanging around just waiting to be listed, and i finally uploaded them to a special ACEO/ATC site, ATCsforAll. you can see my ATCsforAll page here, but for your viewing convenience and my posting largess, i shall upload a selection below:

so check out the rest on ATCsforall, and go ahead and sign up while you’re at it. but only if you’re good enough. after all, as you can see, i am clearly an artistic genius. (^^;)

anyhow, moving on from that slight distortion of the truth, we’ll head straight into the Obsession portion of this evening’s program. as many of my loyal readers (yes, i’m sure i have at least one. she is possibly my sister.) my beloved toyota tercel was slaughtered mercilessly by a mean old mechanic. who probably handed my poor innocent car a poisoned apple or some such thing. anyhow, i have, ever since that time, noticed every single tercel that passes my way. because it is precisely when you do not have something that you notice it the most. anyhow, over the past several months, i have, with my trusty camera phone, documented the world’s multiple tauntings. these i present for you below:

some of them are a little blury, and actually that one that seems to be mostly a picture of my rearview mirror, you can’t really see the tercel in that one, but i swear there is a tercel following me in that picture. there’s also a silver tercel that looks just like my precious murder victim, and it’s even driven by a girl who sort of looks like me, so Creepy.

oh, yes, speaking of pictures. i have yet to photograph my young indy book, but i have contacted its future home, and he hasn’t had any luck finding extra inserts either, so consider this your call out folks. if you have info on young indiana jones diary inserts, let me know!

as for the WorkOut runner’s journal, i, uh, TOTALLY FORGOT to take pictures of it. (^^;) well, laurel said she’d try to bring it next time she comes for a fitting, and she did say she totally loved it. so hopefully i can get some photos of that here before long. it’ll be a little weird to wip out my [light box] right in front of ’em, but maybe i can open up a photo discussion with my dear sarita and totally NERd out. not like she needs to be any more frightened of my NERdness, but WHATEVER! i desire to endear myself to people, and NERd is how i do it.

Labels: etsy, facts, NERd, sarita

well, we’ll get the promotion out of the way first tonight. i listed something new over at my etsy shop just this evening. the story: i get about fifty hundred coupons from my local archiver’s every month. this? is because they Know. on this particular occasion, i got some free Hot Spot items. these are little trinkets that haven’t sold, or are being phased out, or are otherwise on uber sale for $2 a shot. i pretty much had a free-for-all that day. one free = buy five, right? this little pocket – well, not pictured, but WHATever – was one of my grabs that day. i also got some file folders, which will be appearing on this self same channel at a later date. check your local listings. or not. anyhow, the book portion has 20 pages of antique-style laid paper, which means it’s ivory and it has a fancy Fancy texture that makes me happy when i write on it with my fountain pens. i bound it in one of the styles from volume two of Keith Smith’s pentalogy of master works, basically a little loop action. the book then fits inside a black library pocket, which has a little space for notes on the front. there’s also a little black card, but frankly, i don’t really know what it’s for. go fig.

the moral of the story? check it out @ notuboc

and now there was something– oh yeah! last post i said i would take pictures of the notebook i made for laurel. well, … … yeah. let’s just say, i didn’t. (^_^) sarita came over, and i had her write her little message on the inside cover and then i added some glitter to it, and then i had to spray it with about five coats of clear coat just to prevent it from rubbing off (well, only two, but i didn’t wanna hold her up for a year) and then she wrapped it right there, so i didn’t get a chance to take any photos of it. they both came over the other day for a dress fitting, and it turns out she liked it a lot though. (^_^)! also, as a side note, i think i may take up running. if it can do for me what it has apparently done for laurel, i may just have to tough it out. i don’t know how much she runs, but she’s looking GOOD. actually, i have been doing nightly yoga. i had my self weighed at a doctor’s visit on the 2er, and i’ve got another doctor’s visit the 29er, so i’ll have a fairly empirical judging of the results. i’m not expecting a whole bunch, but if i lose even a couple of pounds in a month, i’ll be pretty happy. the number we saw on the 2er? not the number i was looking to hear. … actually, i have lost some weight over the past couple of months, as has been shown by the doctor’s scale, but still. not enough. i need to look hawt this summer. why? because i’m overly concerned with being attractive to certain person on whom i have what is commonly known as a crush.

that is all.

Labels: books, etsy, facts, sarita

remember way way back in the day, when i entered the manglish contest over at MangaNovel? perhaps you remember the You’re Still in the Running email i received? well, they have now released the results, and although i did not win (sniff. sniff. farewell, iPod Touch of my dreams) i did get a little honorable mention! yays for me! i get 500 points over at MN, although i haven’t found anything i’m desperate to read at the moment, but maybe something’ll pop up. anyhow, they said they’ll publish the winning translations, so that will be a definite must-read for me. i wonder if i didn’t win coz my translation was off-kilter somehow or because my graphics editing kind of bit. i’m so used to photoshop that i found it difficult to operate within the parameters of the program. i’m thinking it was actually my translation, though. i didn’t feel certain about a few sentences, and i probably got them wrong. either way, i definitely want to see the winners’ translations. a chance to study up for my future career as a terribly famous translator. (^_^)

in other news, i have decided that i am done with the young indiana jones diary. that’s right, i still have that thing in my house… the problem is that we’re having difficulty getting images/info for the inserts. we were able to piece together a fair number of them, and my client has an email into his Indy Contact, but so far we haven’t heard anything. i’m not holding out a whole lot of hope. i have basically scowered the internets with no luck, so i’ll be taking some pictures of the goods for presentation here soon. also, the WorkOut running journal that i’m making for my friend’s sister is all but done, and although it doesn’t incorporate all the stuff she was hoping for, it looks mildly cool if i do say so myself. it has stickers. i like making stickers. i’ve been wearing a star on my hand for like three days now. i took it off to take a shower last night, and the residue stayed on my hand. when they said Permanent Adhesive, they weren’t joking around. (^_^) i’ll have pics of that, too, probably tomorrow.

for the moment, i’m thinking about World Book and Copyright Day, which is April 23rd! BEST (the rockin-est Etsy bookbinding team this side of whatever) is having a group sale to celebrate. each member is offering their own offer, and we’ll have a post up about it soon. i’m doing free shipping and handling, so if you buy from me that day, don’t pay me until i send you a revised invoice! i’ll post a link as soon as we’ve got our post up. we’re also each making a book in honor of the day, and thus is the crux of today’s problem. I HAVE SO MANY GOODS! WHAT BOOK DO I MAKE!?

~off to consider the Issue. In depth.

Labels: books, etsy, facts, sarita

finally, we have a lucky-numbered post. and what a lucky time it is, too. we here at notubóc have many many things to tell you about! first things first, the Etsy Bookbinding Street Team (acronymed BEST for a reason, people). not only is its existence awesome (see previous parenthesis) but our ongoing charity event is, well, ongoing. and our very own charity book sold recently! that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, if you were hoping to snatch up that coffee tome at some later date, your chance has passed. $25 donated to HELP international, and our good deed done for the day.

speaking of good deeds, i finally managed to pass on the bond book to its rightful owner. (^_^) she loved it. (^_^) i’m not sure how many more smiley faces i can put this paragraph before i reach the legal limit. (^_^)

anyhow, i bring this up a) because i like to dwell on ego boosts, but also b) because she — i wonder if her sister would ever care if i had a blog if she knew it… i’m thinkin … no. so. she asked me to make her sister’s b-day present. for which i bought a xyron sticker maker. it’s kinda cheesy looking. actually, it’s very cheesy looking. it’s even glittery. i’m not sure what kind of demographic studies they did on this thing, but frankly, it looks like a toy. it does, however, turn out to churn out stickers like a pro. seriously, the girl’s new notebook is 5.5″ by 8.5″ and i’ve got an entire sheet of little purple stars pumped out on this thing in like five minutes. 112 of the cutest little stickers IN the world, i might add. almost makes me wanna make more. not that i have a use for them, but i guess practicality has never been a particularly strong measure of potential for me. now if only designing the pages were as easy as making the stickers had been.

which gives me yet another excuse to discuss My Desk. purchased during our recent excursion to Ikea West Chester (which does rock, by the by) i spent (very nearly all of) my hard-earned cash on a desk, a lamp, another lamp, desk legs, moar bamboo, a TV stand, and the obligatory little impulse buys that ikea tends to produce in me with the ease of mind control. sort of like a book store. i go in there, and my wallet starts crying, from pure reflex. this time, however, i did well. this desk? rocks. as you can see, it is FAR too big for my poor little room, but there really isn’t anywhere else to put it. and now i can put my printer on something, so overall, it’s not bad. and it’s right in time for Script Frenzy, so i have somewhere to get away from everybody else and write my 100 pages. that space where you see the lights? that’s a built-in light box. that’s right, they cut out part of the desk, stuck in some glass, and they even sell clampy lights to light it up with, although i did not end up with any of those lights.

but meredeth? i hear you say. why is there a set of metal legs on one side, and cardboard/duct tape on the other? … well … let’s just say my wallet really was crying, and we’ll try not to let on that i misread the labels about how many boxes of desk legs i needed to have in my possession when i exited the store, shall we? it’ll have to wait a while, too, coz meredeth’s a little broke this time of year. [blatant shilling] why not help a girl out and buy something? [/blatant shilling]

Labels: books, etsy, facts, sarita

yet another trip through my local half price book store netted me several books that are slated for destruction and rebuilding, of which this is the first. the insides of this one were about as hokey as possible, and so it was with great abandon that i ripped the pages out and replaced it with crisp white blank goodness, ripe for you to scribble your own facts all over. it’s tiny, but shiny!

—now for sale on etsy.

Labels: facts