Way back in 2004, I wrote the first English language article on gluebooks, and started the Gluebooks group on Yahoo. We’ve been happily gluing ever since.

Now, Gluebooks is also on Facebook. If you like to get your fingers gluey, and are on Facebook too, come join us!

Coming December 1st: The 6th Annual Original Printables Holiday Countdown. Every day between the first of December and Christmas Day, a new set of printable images will be revealed. Bookmark the link, and spread the world!

I like the simple, bold style of these art journal pages by Annie Grapek.

“Every day during 2011, Bristol artist Kirsty Hall will go for a walk to release an art jar into the wild for people to find and keep.” Check out her project, 365 Jars.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about Round Robin Books For Charity, a set of auctions to raise money for charity by clearing out old altered round robin books.

Since then, there have been a handful of books posted on behalf of my charity of choice, A Place To Bark. Dear arty friend Corinne Stubson also joined in with some of her books, and together so far, we’ve raised just over $250.

I’m going to continue posting RRB4C auctions in the coming weeks, but I’ll probably do just one book at a time. If you’d like to join me in clearing out your stash of old, well-loved arted-up books to help raise money, please follow the instructions in this post to make sure your books show up in the auction links I’m posting to my newsletter, here at GMS, to Facebook, Twitter, and wherever else I can work them in.

In last week’s altered book chat session, we discussed what to do with old round robin books. If you’re a long-time book alterer, like me, you probably have TONS of round robin books around the house. It’s time to look haul them out, look through them, and decide if it’s time for them to move on to a new home—and in the process, raise some money for a worthy charity.

Here’s what I propose:

• Find an old altered book or round robin book in your collection that could go to a new home.

• Photograph it, to the best of your abililty, showing off its coolest aspects.
• List the book on eBay, and include this in the auction title: RRB4C
• While you’re building your listing, you’ll see a section titled eBay Giving Works. Donate 100% of your sale to charity. There are dozens of charities listed—you can search for the one that you wish to support. (My charity auctions are going to A Place to Bark, artist Bernie Berlin’s animal rescue.)

If you wish, you can also include this message in the text of your listing:

“What’s RRB4C? Round Robin Books For Charity! Altered book artists are clearing out their collections, and listing much-loved books for auction to raise money for their favorite charities. Want to participate? Visit GoMakeSomething.com to learn more.”

Auction listings will appear at this link as they are posted.

Check out these amazing book sculptures by Isaac Salazar:

I made this image with Atom Smasher’s Graffiti Generator.

I’m on an art journal kick right now, and these journal pages by Glenda Tkalac really caught my eye.

Strathmore is offering a series of free journaling workshops on their web site. I did the first one in January, but it will be left up until August, so you can dive in any time. The second workshop begins on March 1st. Check out the workshop descriptions and sign up.

Hello—did I mention they’re FREE? Go get yourself some free inspiration!