a perfect dozen - new bullet journals

handmade long stitch bullet journals with dotted grid pages / Kaija Rantakari - www.paperiaarre.com Just listed in the shop: a dozen new bullet journals in a dozen colours and three different long stitch style variations. I only made one in each colour, and you know the drill: once a colour has sold out, it's gone & the next lot of bullet journals will be something different. Another reason for you to rush off to shop is that I'm leaving town for a week come Monday morning, so, any orders placed after Sunday morning won't be heading out until April 11th. My birthday present to myself is a week in Helsinki: museums, libraries, poetry, artists' books, long walks, and tons of photos. While I visit Helsinki fairly often, I never stay long enough to visit more than a handful of places, and I always end up running out of time or energy. This trip should solve both problems and get me out of the home town rut I'm in. I'll probably flood my Instagram feed & stories with photos of Helsinki, so do follow along if you're interested. For those fully uninterested in stuff that's not books: I will be posting artists' book stuff next week as well! I have finished my #areyoubookenough bookbinding challenge piece in time, and you can see it very soon on Instagram, and there'll be a post here on Monday as well.

handmade long stitch bullet journals with dotted grid pages / Kaija Rantakari - www.paperiaarre.com

Back to the bullet journals after the tourism side step: like I said, I switched things up a bit and did three different variations of the long stitch binding. The loopy chain stitch kind on the yellow and orange journals I hadn't done in a decade but I do like it a lot.

handmade long stitch bullet journals with dotted grid pages / Kaija Rantakari - www.paperiaarre.com

Dotted grid pages, as always - the best kind of pages for bullet journaling:

handmade long stitch bullet journals with dotted grid pages / Kaija Rantakari - www.paperiaarre.com

My personal bullet journal is a life saver this week: fighting a cold most of last week left me horribly behind schedule on many things, and going away for a week on Monday doesn't help either. So, I'm cramming in long work days this week, writing mega long to-do lists, and giving myself a pat on the back every time I finish a task. V has seen me only in passing this week since I've been holed up in the studio so much. One evening he stopped by (yeah, we both work at home, but my studio is at the the opposite end of every other relevant part of our home, so he needs to purposefully come and greet me), sniffed my hair and told me I smelled like home (can I get an awwwww here?). The sweet smell of home was quickly narrowed down as I had just finished sanding a stack of book board. Your homes may smell like cinnamon or lavender, but at our place, we prefer friction and dust...

Today I'm going to finish off with a quick recommendation for pretty much everyone who likes to listen to stuff as they work: the brand new (and brilliant!) S-town podcast kept me company while I glued the covers for this lot - nearly seven hours of amazing storytelling that was so good I got pretty distracted at times and forgot to keep that glue brush going. Which obviously isn't that great when you desperately need to get work done, but I'm telling you - it's worth it!