moleskinerie

Happy Halloween!

"The Artist Formerly Known As Prince...with his mom."

10th Annual North Halsted Street Halloween Parade
10.31.06
Chicago, Illinois

© ABF 

View the FLICKR photo set

Official Event Site

How to do Gravestone Rubbings

1. Make sure the stone is clean and completely dry.  Tape will not adhere  to a wet stone, and the dampness will make the paper fragile and liable to tear.  Besides ruining any chance of a rubbing, this may cause you to accidentally damage the stone with your rubbing material. 
2. Cut a piece of your paper or other rubbing material to a size slightly larger than the stone. If possible, write any information on or about the stone, inscription, date, location, etc. on the back of the paper before doing the rubbing so you don't smear your rubbing. Or, carry a small notebook, write the information on a page, tear out and roll up with your rubbing.
3. Tape the paper to the stone.  Make sure that it is secure so that it won't slide as you are rubbing and cause a blurred image, and that it covers the face of the stone completely, so that you won't get marks on it.  
4. If only doing lunettes, please be sure that a large enough area is covered to protect the stone.
5. With your fingers, press the paper lightly against the stone.  This will cause the paper to indent into the carvings, resulting in a clearer image, with less rubbing medium accidentally transferring into "blank" areas.
6. Using rubbing wax, a large crayon, charcoal, or chalk, gently start to rub along the outside edges - creating a "frame" for your rubbing.  Using  long, even strokes following the same direction, fill in the "frame".
7. Rub lightly to start with, and then apply more pressure to darken in the design if it suits you. Be very careful and gentle.
8. If you used chalk for your rubbing, then carefully spray the paper with a chalk spray such as Krylon.  Be very careful not to get any on the tombstone. It is best to remove the paper from the stone and lay it flat on the ground in an area away from any stones before spraying.
9. When the rubbing is done, carefully remove it from the tombstone and trim the edges to suit your liking. Remove the tape from the paper, being careful not to tear the edges of the paper.

Savingraves.org

Image: waynesville K12

1. Make sure the stone is clean and completely dry.  Tape will not adhere  to a wet stone, and the dampness will make the paper fragile and liable to tear.  Besides ruining any chance of a rubbing, this may cause you to accidentally damage the stone with your rubbing material. 
2. Cut a piece of your paper or other rubbing material to a size slightly larger than the stone. If possible, write any information on or about the stone, inscription, date, location, etc. on the back of the paper before doing the rubbing so you don't smear your rubbing. Or, carry a small notebook, write the information on a page, tear out and roll up with your rubbing.
3. Tape the paper to the stone.  Make sure that it is secure so that it won't slide as you are rubbing and cause a blurred image, and that it covers the face of the stone completely, so that you won't get marks on it.  
4. If only doing lunettes, please be sure that a large enough area is covered to protect the stone.
5. With your fingers, press the paper lightly against the stone.  This will cause the paper to indent into the carvings, resulting in a clearer image, with less rubbing medium accidentally transferring into "blank" areas.
6. Using rubbing wax, a large crayon, charcoal, or chalk, gently start to rub along the outside edges - creating a "frame" for your rubbing.  Using  long, even strokes following the same direction, fill in the "frame".
7. Rub lightly to start with, and then apply more pressure to darken in the design if it suits you. Be very careful and gentle.
8. If you used chalk for your rubbing, then carefully spray the paper with a chalk spray such as Krylon.  Be very careful not to get any on the tombstone. It is best to remove the paper from the stone and lay it flat on the ground in an area away from any stones before spraying.
9. When the rubbing is done, carefully remove it from the tombstone and trim the edges to suit your liking. Remove the tape from the paper, being careful not to tear the edges of the paper.

Savingraves.org

Image: waynesville K12

How To Unwrap a New Moleskine

1. Unwrap the plastic
2. Pull the paper sleeve from the cover
3. Tuck the post card and stamps in the accordion pocket.
4. Kiss the history of Moleskine pamphlet, and reflect how fortunate you are to be using a notebook favored by Hemmingway and Van Gogh
5. Open the notebook, and turn to the middle, or thereabouts
6. Bury your nose between the pages, rooting as closely as possible to the spine.
7. Breath deeply
8. Repeat Step 7 until filled with a sense of well being

From Geekmouth, now sadly 404'rd.

[Rediscovered by Just Charlie]

Magical Spaces

A Magical Space is a place that holds memories and emotional treasures. It could be any  place, anywhere. On 1 July, Moleskine notebooks were passed to various members of the public and asked to express the answer to the question: “Where is your magical space? ”

31 Oct - 14 Nov at The Asylum, 22 Ann Siang Road
Singapore

Magical Spaces

ENTER

Moleskine Found; Reward Required

"I found a journal, with NEXT written on the front cover, in the Apple Store, SoHo on Prince Street, Manhattan during the author reading of Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, October 16th. Moleskine brand. Loaded with creative writings, and photos in the read inside cover.

Didn’t read, just glanced through to see if I could find a contact number or email but there wasn’t any. I think it might belong to an apple store employee.

If you lost this, please contact me and state some facts about the inside so I can verify it’s you who truly lost it.

I have fallen in love with the new and beautiful Apple iPod Touch 16GB, and I would really like to have one, (it would be my first and only iPod) so I would kindly appreciate a reward in the amount of $395 USD. You can pay me via PayPal using your credit card, and pay over time. If you prefer to pay by check or money order, please inform and I can send you the address to do so..."

LINK

[via The Daily Jimmy ]

Note: This notebook is not part of any Moleskinerie project. -ABF

Quoted

Anglepoised

© 2007

Man as a Bird

The sight of migrating geese reminded me of Mattias Adolfsson's recent quirky renditions of "Man as bird" 

LINK

Mattias is freelance Illustrator working from Sweden.

Greetings to our friends in Owasso, OK., Oranjestad, Beijing, Warszawa, Chivasso, Nijmegen, El Moncayo, Guatemala, Utuado, Arvada, CO., Sneek, Mumbai, Cote D'Ivoire, Kluj, Bogen, Lima, Entre Rios, Muri, Honrio Bicalho, Toyonako, Hobart, Jakarta, Longe-Pointe, Chungnam, Lahore, Taoyan, Antalya, Nicosia, Dhaka, Korp and Makati.

 

Numbering the Moleskines?

theprint asked:

" I love my 'skines. But I am looking for a good way to put them in order as I fill them up. It's easy enough to identify the order in which they were used, as soon as I open them, but it'd be even cooler, if there was some fantastic way of giving them a unique exterior.

My question is: What do you do? "

hisprincess says:
"put cool number stickers on the spines... "

blowout says:
"i've either used a label maker or permanent stickers. i've never done it on a moleskine, but i personally love engraving. i use this and it works pretty well."

maliags says:
"im a big fan of putting a large fun non-related sticker on the face of the cover. it helps me to separate them just by looking at the cover and it dresses it up in a fun way."

Join the discussion @ Moleskinerie/FLICKR

Moleskine Laser Engraving Test

What to do with an extra Moleskine, a friend with a laser etching machine and some free time? Patrick Ng sure made good use of his resources.

I created an illustrator file and vectorized some of the images I like, made sure there were enough different types of lines and brush strokes to make comparisons.  Along side with the file I gave a bunch of out dated 2007 diaries to my friend's production base and waited anxiously.

Various strengths and resolutions were tested.  From 8% to 50% strength and 400dpi to 1200dpi.  Basically the laser beam burned away the surface of the notebooks, in particular burn power can be specified to various brush strokes to simulate brush pressure effect.  Anything below 10% on Moleskine cover creates brownish color patterns which looks like silk screen printing but the effect is too subtle.  15% strength creates much lighter brown color because the oilskin is already burned away, showing the hard paper cover beneath.

In terms of resolution, the higher is always better.  However there is no optimal laser power on Moleskine because the effect varies based on the graphic design.  i.e. in case of light fonts and thin strokes, less laser power, as long as it is higher than 15%, creates less depth and lighter color which brings out more of the contrast between the font/strokes and the Moleskine black cover.  In case of bold fonts and large strokes or surface area of the design, it is much more difficult to create an even color impression because paper fibers are arranged less evenly than for example metal, thus density of a surface area varies and burn color varies even though the entire area is applied with the same laser strength.

More at Patrick's blog,Scription

Featured Artist:Caterina Nelli

Caterina Nelli was born in Rome and studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and at Camberwell College of Arts. She currently lives and works in both Rome and New York. Solo exhibitions include: 2006 'Premio Michetti Laboratorio Italia Fondazione Michetti', Curator Philippe Daverio; 2006 'Rome BIT Adriano Olivetti Foundation', 'Foto-Grafia International Festival of Rome', Curator Raffaella Guidobono, 2004 'Openness Gallery' Curator Paola Zampa. Group exhibitions include: 2005 Venice - 'Biennale di Venezia', curator Philippe Daverio, 2006 'Crave London'. 2007 Still Stories Archivio di Stato Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza Rome curated by Raffaella Guidobono. She has also been selected in competition for Art Films and Documentaries, Locarno Film Festival. She also took part in Detour London.

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Learn more about the new Moleskine City Notebook.

Learn more about Detour Exhibitions.

Dealer List (.pdf)

Discover and join our Moleskine communities on LiveJournal, MySpace,  Moleskinerie FLICKR, FACEBOOK and Meal Moles. Get out - have a life and write about it. See you on Monday.