I’d like to welcome local Portland artist Ryan Bubnis to the Engrave Your Book leather Moleskine cover collection. The cover pictured above is laser engraved onto a vegetable tanned leather cover and is now available here. Ryan has an opening reception at Nemo in Portland this Friday.

Featured Artist- Ryan Bubnis from Nemo Design on Vimeo.

In the above video which was produced by Nemo, Ryan discusses his artwork and what you can expect at the upcoming show this friday. I’m excited to collaborate with Ryan on future projects!

My friend Max Brown designed a great 3D Moleskine icon set in Google Sketchup
Click here to download
You are free to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the icons under the following conditions:

Photos by Anna Campbell.

Recently, my friend Ken Tomita curated a furniture design show like no other called Project Chaboo. He brought together 50 of Portland’s finest industrial designers, architects, illustrators, inventors, engineers, and carpenters to reinterpret one of his signature designs. The design is based on a common Japanese low table, known as chabudai. I was fortunate enough to collaborate with one of the nicest illustrators in Portland, Amy Ruppel on her chaboo. I engraved her leaf design into the top surface, then laser cut felt to be infilled into the birch.

Here’s what Amy had to say about her chaboo:
“Since this chaboo is made of a green, solid material, I wanted an emblem of strength to come out of it. To me, that is a young stag in the woods. The felt helps to soften the piece and give it a sense of quiet and a tactile quality that longs to be touched. I like for my work to reflect nature and what inspires me about it. Catching a glimpse of birds or an animal in the woods is exciting to me, and I want to share that excitement.

Large Moleskine® covers are now available! During March, domestic shipping will be free.

Featured Artist:
Junichi Tsuneoka was born and raised in Japan and upon graduating Waseda University in Tokyo, he moved to the USA. Junichi established a style often recognized as “California Roll Stylie,” the result of both visual and conceptual fusion of Japanese pop culture and U.S. urban culture. He’s currently busy creating unique character designs for his Seattle-based STUDIO STUBBORN SIDEBURN.

Click here to browse the artist series.

The pressure’s off! Just give an Engrave Your Book Gift Card and the recipient can choose a cover from the artist series or upload a custom image. Gift cards ship within 24hrs and ship worldwide at no extra cost.

If you’re in Barcelona from now until March 3rd make sure to check out Rojo Gallery. There you’ll find on display the work of Engrave Your Book artist, Justine Ashbee. Justine is known for her large scale free-form sharpie drawings. “I begin with a curve, from which lines and forms begin to emerge, evolve, morph, and grow organically, in an intuitive flow, while maintaining delicate, elegant precision.” Here are a few close-up shots of a 3×7m mural she created for the exhibit with paint pens and china markers:

If the Iberian peninsula isn’t in the cards this spring, you can still enjoy Justine’s ‘amorphous entities’ at www.justineashbee.com or on your personal leather moleskin cover. Congratulations on your first solo European show Justine!

Engrave Your Book is back in action! After discovering that laser engraving art directly onto PVC Moleskines is an unsafe manufacturing process, we’ve developed USA-made leather covers which slip seamlessly over Moleskine notebooks. Not only do the leather covers look incredible engraved, they’re reusable and will only get better with age. Currently, we are only offering pocket-size covers; the large covers will be available early February.

The cover above, by Option-G, is just one of many featured designs in the new artist series. The designs below are by Justine Ashbee, Dan Funderburgh, Cole Gerst, and Alisha Wessler.

Microsoft recently called on me to engrave several MacBook Pros for Macworld 2009 to promote Office:Mac 2008. If you’re a big fan of Office 2008 and Macs, make sure to head to Macworld 2009 for the chance to win one of several Office-branded 15″ Macbook Pros. Apple just announced that Macworld 2009 will be their last, spelling the end of the trade show. The company also mentioned that Steve Jobs will not be giving his traditional keynote presentation this year. Macworld is scheduled to take place in San Francisco from Jan. 5 through Jan. 8.

Consistently, one of my favorite materials to laser engrave is wood. The endless variation of grain patterns makes every outcome unique. Each species reacts differently to the laser light; balsa engraves deep and cuts like butter, laser-cut Plyboo edges are turned a dark ebony, the varying grain density of Pine creates deep waves of grain. When Nemo Design asked me to engrave pine presentation boxes for them, I gladly agreed to the project. The designer took full advantage of the 3d nature of engraved wood with this letterpress motif -

Two passes were used, creating multiple levels of depth in the pieces to separate the blocks from the gutters. The art was bled over the edges of the boxes and tapered around the rounded edges perfectly. This close-up shows how the varying grain density of Pine accentuates the ridges -

Possibly the best aspect of engraving pine is the smell, which instantly reminded me of cold winter nights spent reading by the fireplace.