On Saturday, December 10, we’ll be all over Park Slope in Brooklyn, at not one, but two fairs! I’ll be at PS 321 for Stuff You Should Buy from 10-5, and Matt will be at PS 10 for the South Slope Craft Fair from 11-5.

On Sunday, December 11, we’ll be returning once again to the ever-popular Bust Craftacular holiday extravaganza of everything handmade you could possibly want to buy! The show is two days, but we’ll only be there on Sunday (note the two, count ‘em two fairs we’re already doing Saturday!).

Also, this year’s event is at 82 Mercer in Soho, not the Metropolitan Pavilion as it has been in year’s past. It’s $3 to get in and a fun, energetic atmosphere with some of the best independent, handmade work going these days. Please stop by if you have the chance!

See you there!
Maggie

We’d love to see you!

We spent last weekend visiting family in Iowa, and flew back late Monday afternoon…and turned right around to go to the National Stationery Show at The Javits Center in Manhattan Tuesday morning.

We’re kicking around exhibiting at the show next year and wanted to walk the aisles to see what it’s all about. It was invigorating to see all the other great work being done out there by people an awful lot like us and we so enjoyed scoping things out.

We had a great time, met tons of people and saw great work, including:
• BirdDog Press Allison Bozeman uses her grandmother’s feed sacks as inspiration for her lovely patterns and achieves beautiful geometric yet delicate results!
• Rifle Paper Co. Anna and Nathan Bond sell an unmistakable look. Anna’s illustrations and lettering are nostalgic, stylish, playful, and hip. Think Babar + Maira Kalman + 1956.
• Fugu Fugu Press Ken & Shino’s cards feature their own simple yet bold, smart illustrations. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity, though, they’re often printing multiple colors on each card and getting great overlapping effects!
• Rag & Bone Jason Thompson & Ilira Steinman’s company produces beautifully made books and it was a treat to meet this couple in person. I continue to be inspired by the business they’ve built and the quality of their work.
• Sapling Press Lisa Krowinski’s cards are minimal and brilliantly funny and she was showing a fabulous assortment of clean, smart, text-only designs. Plus, Lisa’s a total joy – what’s not to love?!

There was gobs more great work – check these folks out when you have a chance: Pistachio Press, Albertine Press, Flywheel Press, May Day Studio (Kelly makes fantastic books with her own papers, too!), Fine Day Press, Linda & Harriett, Red Oak Press and lots more that I’m sure I’ll remember as soon as I click “publish” on this post!

I talked with my mom after walking through the show and she was curious to know what we got out of it. It turns out that, as with all the shows she’s done and been to, we walked away with something very similar: a great sense of the current climate of fine, handmade paper goods and where our own work fits in to that spectrum.

I’m proud to say I’m part of an informal community of all of these hard workers and to also say that our work fits right in while remaining totally distinctive from anything else out there.

From Joel Lipman’s “Origins of Poetry”

P.S. There’s also great coverage of the show and heaps of great photos over on Oh So Beautiful Paper!

Thanks to every one of you who supports the work we do and the way we do it. We are so lucky and there are so many wonderful things yet to come – we are so happy to have you along for the ride!

“Priceless Gifts” by Anna Swir.

Saturday, we hit the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx, which is absolutely gorgeous. It’s a park-like setting and the wooded areas are beautiful, as is the rose garden, and the assortment of lilies, lady’s slippers, and poppies, in particular.

After the Botanical Garden, we made our way down to Williamsburg to swing through the Renegade Craft Fair, which was excellent. In particular, I thought there was a lot of great fabric work, as well as a wonderful assortment of paper and printing-related pieces…which I always have my eyes peeled for!

We had a chance to meet several people in person who I’ve kept up with on blogs, but who either live outside of the area, or whom I’ve just never run into.

Mary Robbins of Moth Designs in Portland, Maine does a very fun assortment of screenprinted onesies, tshirts, and lots more with Arabic phrases on them. Mary’s husband is Moroccan and I think we originally connected because of my (past-life’s) work with Morocco, and I’ve kept up with her work and her blog for a year or two now.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Kelly McMahon from MayDay Studio in Montpelier, Vermont. Kelly is also a bookbinder and printer, like myself, and she makes great journals and albums, as well as cards, broadsides, and some new beautiful decorative papers!

We also landed on Andy Pratt’s booth, shared with Davin from Woodside Press. Matt got me a package of Andy’s cards featuring Brooklyn rooftops a few months ago and I really love the style of his work and drawings – they’re just a ton of fun.

Davin and the guys at Woodside have just produced a gorgeous chapbook of a poem of Walt Whitman’s, entitled “Pictures”. The book was created in tandem with a Whitman celebration at the Brooklyn Museum’s Library, and is available on Etsy and well worth the incredibly reasonable $35 price tag. As someone who has designs of her own on finally getting some fine press books printed and bound, this was a great, inspiring piece to see.

With a great weekend under our belts, the week is already off to a quick start, and there will be lots of new journals and a few new albums up on Etsy throughout the week, so please continue to stop back and check out all of these fun new things!

Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider”.

Buddy in the backseat, everyone at Uncle Tim’s, and Willa & Matt banging pots together on New Year’s Eve in the freezing cold

In the spirit of the new year (how is it actually 2009?!?), we are getting organized and getting our goals together so that we can hopefully get things off to an exciting start. This morning I woke up thinking, “What are we going to make today?” and so we’ve been chipping away at that very question.

The holidays offered us a *very* welcome break from work and we got back in to the swing of actually cooking (a LOT). For gifts, I made a tasty batch of lemon curd, as well as preserved orange marmalade, green bean pickles, and apple butter for everyone in our family (the last 2 thanks to Alicia’s wonderful recipes!). Matt has an active batch of winter wheat ale in its secondary fermentation in the kitchen closet right now, and we’re going to tackle homemade cheese soon!

And now it’s time to get organized and really get a sense of what the year has in store for us…well, as much as we can get a sense, that is! I’ve got a huge list of ideas for cards, books, some brand new projects, and I think I can safely say that Matt and I are both most excited about the book printing projects we have on our horizon. It’s been our goal to combine binding and letterpress work for some fine press projects, and the time is finally here! There will be lots of updates on that front, as we go along, and I’m looking forward to sinking our teeth into the design process and starting to nail down some materials and specifics.

We can’t wait to get to work!

With Mom & Dad, as they headed out of Brooklyn

What are you going to make in 2009?

Whatever you do, bear in mind wise words from E.B. White’s letters: “We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.”

For once, I’m going to keep this short and simple!: 2008 has been speedy and beyond busy and incredibly rewarding. Here’s to as muche growth, learning, possibilities, and joy as we can all handle in 2009!

Black and white album, blue burst on chocolate journal, green and yellow striped journal

Chiyogami papers are Japanese silkscreened decorative papers with intricate, rich patterns, and I use a lot of these papers for the covers of my books. The papers have a wonderful, subtle texture to them and if you have a chance to see some of them in person, you’ll know exactly why I love them.

Though I use a lot of Japanese materials, I still have a lot to learn about the specific processes and history (isn’t there always more to know?!?), and these sorts of papers are new territory for a lot of people, so here’s a little more background on what exactly Chiyogami paper is. Besides having an incredible assortment of intricate and beautiful patterns, the paper itself is very forgiving, and a joy to work with for bookbinding purposes, and I also use it a lot for decorative additions to letterpress projects.

Enjoy taking a peek!

Two little salespeople halfway through a long, but very fun day!

And…just a reminder that I can still ship any journals, albums, and cards ordered through my website or Etsy through the end of the day this Friday, and am happy to make expedited shipping arrangements, if you need something after that, just in time for Christmas!

Also, I did finish up a few new cards on Saturday, right before the Craftacular. I’ve used a drawing I did of a chart of the winter sky with Orion rising in the lower lefthand corner, printed in an icy blue ink that I mixed. Some of the cards are just the Orion image, and others are printed with “happy new year” in lowercase type across the bottom of the card in a deep blue ink.

And they’re up on Etsy and my site!

Back to custom card printing!

After unloading our Rubbermaid bins and the paper covered display boxes/shelves I’d made the day before on to the sidewalks of W 18th, we made our way in to the venue and wound our way through all the other vendors who were taking advantage of the brief set-up hour before the rush began. At 10 a.m. there was a noticeable swell in the room, as hundreds of craftacularites made a mad dash in to the room to get a peek at all the work they’d been waiting (in some cases) months to see.

There was a steady stream of people moving around the entire room for, well, the entire day. We were tucked away in a back corner which we thought might be the kiss of death, but it turned out to be a nice reprieve from the havoc in the center aisles.

Just so there’s no confusion: this was the first show I’ve ever done with my own work. I’ve done lots of art fairs with my mom for her prints and drawings – including my first foray at three days old – but never my with my own work. I was excited to have people see albums, journals, and cards in person and have a chance to handle them and really get a feel for the stitching and the papers and the textures. When you sell the majority of your work online and you happen to be a pretty extroverted person, it makes a huge difference to have a few chances to show off one on one.

We powered through the afternoon and, finally, as things wrapped up around 7:30, got our bins packed up and ourselves packed up, and managed to grab a cab right outside, into which we loaded our tired bodies and gear and headed for Brooklyn. We toasted the whole experience with tacos & Pacifico at Chavella’s (our amazing neighbors) and then collapsed in a heap when we finally got home.

It was a busy day, and I’ll put some more pictures up on Flickr soon, thanks to our little gem Caroline (my best promoter ever!), who grabbed some great shots in the middle of the afternoon.

For now…back to the last bit of the holiday rush and huge thanks to everyone who came out and supported all of our work – you know we appreciate it all!!!

“A Shopkeeper’s Story” by Bob Hicok.

Tiny flat thank you cards…up on Etsy!

I’m also making more letterpress snow angel cards just as fast as I can…you love these guys!

And, speaking of snow, I hear there’s been some in the Midwest…here’s hoping at least a little of it decides to hit NYC!