Monday morning work table, Tuesday afternoon, and Thursday afternoon…busily scoring and gluing calendars and just trying to juggle all of the constantly moving and changing piles! (Should these be filed under “doing too much with too little space”?)
The last few weeks and the next few weeks are jam packed not only with holiday card printing and shipping, but with putting together an awful lot of custom photo albums and guestbooks.
A custom, personalized Coptic stitch guestbook with a letterpress printed cover page and a gorgeous red/black/white/gold crane chiyogami cover
One of my favorite things about putting together custom albums is going through the process of choosing and suggesting papers. We often use chiyogami papers for the covers, since the albums are for weddings or special occasions and the chiyogami patterns and textures are unbelievably elegant.
New chiyogami papers for a batch of custom Coptic stitch photo albums
For this batch of custom albums, there are a few papers that I use regularly (the dark green floral, the multicolored blossoms), and a couple of new, custom-ordered patterns. I love the blue plum blossom pattern, especially – I think that would be gorgeous for any sort of winter event and could be really lovely as a custom paper band for one of our new invite sets, as well. Maybe with chocolate brown and pale blue inks to match?
There are a lot of little details this time of year, and I find myself making to-do list after to-do list in order to stay on top of custom orders and my own deadlines for printing and announcing new work. I’m feeling invigoratingly challenged by the need to integrate a newborn into a working schedule and am feeling especially excited about the coming year. I’ve found that the weekends are one of the best opportunities to get work done…probably the same way my mom discovered that 4:30 a.m. was a great time to get work done when you have 3 small kids!
So many projects are in the works and I have more ideas than I have time for…and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. The real hurdle these days is just doing what we can in the limited space we have. We’ll be ready to bite the bullet on expanding in the not so distant future but, for now, we’re making it work! I feel incredibly lucky to have put myself in a working position where I can not only do the work I love, but have control over my own schedule and be able to spend my days with Charlotte. Don’t worry, I don’t take it for granted for a second!
Your work is absolutely gorgeous. I am in awe!