Category Archives: remainders

Items of Interest #16

Here are some things. Things you might enjoy. Things that may inform. Things that may entertain.

That should keep you busy for a while. It’s a short week so I know you weren’t planning on getting any work done anyway.

I’m a writer. Writing is how I make this world a better, friendlier, stronger place. If these words improved your day, please let me know by contributing here.

Items Of Interest #14

As I traversed the vast valley of information this past week, here are the destinations I found worthy of sending you this collection of postcards from:

  • Like my friend Andy at Woodclinched (which is a great pencil and paper related blog, by the way), I too am wondering if the Barton Fig notebook is worth the hype. This notebook’s life — like so many products these days — began as a highly successful Kickstarter project. They are now available for sale to the public. So, I have ordered one to see. Perhaps I’ll do a brief review here once it comes.

  • Of course, I’m sure it can’t out do the holy grail of paper notebooks, The Tomoe River Paper Journal

  • I just received a cover for my Hobonichi Techo journal made by One Star Leather Goods and I am blown away by it’s fit, quality, and attention to detail. The products they make are just spectacular. All hand cut and stitched. Because of this, they are currently on hold in taking new orders so that they can catch up with demand. A good problem to have and a sure sign that it is worth waiting for. I’m absolutely smitten with mine.

  • Now that I have revealed just how deep my paper problem runs, it should come as no surprise that I’m absolutely smitten with the idea of Harlequin Creature. It’s a zine where every copy is individually hand-typed by volunteers. The remainder of this will now be hand typed as the fingers of the other hand hover over the Buy Now button…

  • Joshua Ginter has a nice review of the Hellbrand Field Notes Cover I mentioned in an interview as part of Chris Gonzoles Artifacts series. If you are looking for a nice cover to carry your Field Notes style notebook in, this is the one you want…

  • In case you have not noticed I’m a sucker for leather covers of all sorts. I’m probably carrying half a cow on me at any given moment.

  • Here is a lovely essay on keeping a journal and being OK with recording your life offline. I love this: “All you need is sentence, a word, a thought, and suddenly you remember who you actually were.”

  • I’m a bit more obsessed with paper related stuff than normal as of late. OK, fine, here is one non-paper related link…

  • My little girl only recently became obsessed with Superheroes. We actually just watched The Incredibles today. I have not seen it since it’s theatrical release. So, learning these cool background facts about the Pixar hit comes at a very opportune time. So cool!

Go out and make it a great day.

Announcing Tweet Small Change

Here’s a project that my wife and I are officially launching today. It’s called Tweet Small Change. What is it?

Tweet Small Change is a project to bestow $140.00 micro-grants given to compelling arts projects that are pitched via tweet.

In other words, we invite artists and creators to submit an idea via tweet for what they would do with $140.00. Submissions are open for 48 hours once announced. The best are chosen — up to 10 per round (i.e. each round is funded at $1400.00). All we ask is that creators share their funded projects on social networks with the hashtag #tweetsmallchange.

That’s it. No strings. No crazy submission process. Just $140.00 to make great art. And, we hope, make the world that much better, stronger, and beautiful.

The idea for this came from my wife, Bethany, who is an Arts and Non-Profit Business Consultant and has long and deep connections to the arts community. After coming home from one of the many receptions her work requires her to attend, she came home absolutely buzzing about this idea she came up with there. We talked all night and though the next day about it. And, we decided that, if we wanted to make a real difference, we had better put our money where our mouths were.

So, this first round we are funding completely ourselves. We will judge and choose the submissions and write the checks to those we pick. If this is a success, we might do it again in the future and/or invite others to help fund a round and pick some projects.

For now, we hope that people simply check it out and consider pitching their $140.00 ideas. On social media we are at:

Also, we hope you spread the word. Please share it with your friends, followers, etc. Especially if you are an artist/creator or work within that community. Because, we really do believe small changes can have big results.