Editing The Pen Addict 248/transcript (section)

== Ink Swatch Book ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' So, Anna's working on a pretty sweet looking new product with her actual husband, the wonderful Bob of Skylab Letterpress. It is an ink testing swatch book. So, there's like two inch by four inch cards with a binder ring that are in them. So, you can easily pop them out and move them around, which I think is really cool. And it looks like, I mean, you can maybe give me a bit more info on this, Brad, that Anna went to kind of great lengths to source some paper for this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' She has been working on this six months, maybe, if not more. It's taken her a long, long time to get the paper she's wanted. And I know, Matt, we're going to talk about that too with your goods. I know it's taken you a long time to find like, what's the paper I'm going to put my name on, right? That's kind of a big deal.

'''Matt Armstrong:''' Yeah, and there's news about that too, which we will get to.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, I've made sure to bring that up because I want to hear about that. But yes, it's taken her a long time and it's finally just come like right down to the gun where she wanted to launch this at the Arkansas Pen Show. Her and Bob are going to have a table there and they will be available. So this came about because a lot of people in the pen community used a product by Moramon. They had these kind of educational note cards on a ring and a lot of people just, you know, use those for ink swatching notebooks. And they discontinued it probably a year or two ago. So Anna came up with something awesomer.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Custom made for the task, right? Yeah. Rather than having something that was kind of like retrofit to do this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that's a good way to put it. And she made a great post about it, did all the testing, and now is ready to send it off into the world. So it should be good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So as Brad said, she's kind of demoing, like previewing them. I think you'll probably be able to pick some up at the Arkansas Pen Show. But then they're coming soon after that for $10 plus shipping. So great looking product. I'm looking forward to picking up some of my own. Just to basically test Hiroshisuku over and over and over again, I guess.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, the 100 swatches of Fuyugaki. Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, for me, I would want a product like this for when I go to pen shows. Just so I have some like good paper that is like, not quality control isn't the word I'm looking for, but like standardized testing environment, like for pens as well as ink. Right? So it's like, I know how such and such pen works on this paper because I use it. So now I get to like test pens against each other and find out what works for me and what doesn't. So I think it may be for more than just ink. I think it's like the thing that you clip to your belt on the fishing vest, I guess, when you're walking around the pen show. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, yeah, I think that's important. I know, Matt, when we're at pen shows, you like if we're working for Lisa Van Ness or if we're just walking around the show and someone asks one of us a question, you know, about either a nib or an ink. A lot of times you have kept a record like in a notebook, you know, you've pulled that notebook out several times when we're talking, you know, about pens and inks and you just kind of have a record of what's used. You find that useful, I assume, right?

'''Matt Armstrong:''' Oh, yeah. And so both the notebooks that I carry around with me and I have I've been using these artist trading cards for my swatches that are about the same size. And I just keep them in like a filing cabinet. But something like this would be great, especially to break it up by because I've got so much ink. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. But to break it up by brand, you know, to have a notebook for each brand or parts of notebooks for each brand is something where I could do lots of comparisons and stuff. So, yeah, I'm excited. I'm hoping she's going to be at Chicago because I want to pick some up there, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. So you also teased in here, Myke, that Myke's coming out with some. Well, you put it in here. I put it in here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But, you know, Jeff is the teasing mastermind around all of this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Jeff is he's wanted to make a kind of crazy note card for probably two to three years now. It's essentially your standard note card just folded. So, I mean, it's not like, you know, rocket science here, but it's it's basically a double sided, a double fold note card. It's basically four sides for a single note card. And he wanted to make it in the three and a half by five and a half kind of pocket notebook standard. So it fits in all these things. And it's called the Gigante. And, you know, it's our it's it's just something that's been rattling around in his head for years. And we're finally getting to the point where we thought it'd be cool to make it because it's it's going to be kind of cool. We're excited.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' When's the kind of the timeline on this should be ready for the Atlanta pen show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And then we're also making like a petite one that we have Gigante and we're going to have petite, which is the standard business card size because Jeff uses that a lot. So like we always do, we make stuff we want to use and have fun with. And, you know, when we get the opportunity to do something cool like this, we we try to push it through and see what everyone else thinks. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Nice. So, yeah, I wanted to put that in there because that's a fun little thing for sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Should be ready for Atlanta.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think we might have something else ready for Atlanta, which I'm kind of scared about. I have a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot of printed out colorful images at the show. What do you think?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Don't encourage them. I didn't think of this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They've already started. They've already started that. That's why I'm bringing it up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So there has been some incredible advancement to the I'm trying to think of a name for not just like the pen addict coloring book webpage, but like the nightmare inducing coloring book that we've had going on for a while that Alexander has built. He's put a bunch more stuff in there that I'm really excited to see, including tons of more color palettes, which are all named brilliantly. Hype orange. We have two Hiroshizukus. Nuclear fallout green. Pink underwear. There's a reference to last week. Sky at night, naturally. So yeah, this is amazing. And there's also some pretty funny sponsor-related Easter eggs in here as well, which makes me laugh that he's gone to the trouble of putting those in. This thing is one of my favorite things of all time. And I love Alexander greatly for putting this thing together. And it keeps getting better and better. And now there are more colors that you can use to create just vastly increasing, horrifying images of me and Brad together.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Emerald of Chavor color palette. Tahitian black lip oyster, which is still the greatest show title ever, probably. Although last week's a contender.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, this is amazing. Thank you, Alexander. And my Twitter mentions are filling up with new colors. And I haven't found all the Easter eggs yet, but I see them popping up in some of the images people are sending me. So he really outdid himself with version. We're on version 0.25. So we're iterating quickly here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So thank you so much for doing that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So let's get on to what the people want. And the people want to hear from Matt. So let's talk about our first sponsor, and then we'll get into business here.