this evening after NSS, we attended the oh so beautiful paper paper party! holy crap. sam had a couple of dreams come true there... i stared at anna bond from afar and made googly eyes at her (SO. PRETTY.)... and we escaped relatively unscathed (aside from that $32 whiskey) and headed to shake shack for burgers and fries before bedtime. i enjoyed an extremely delicious mushroom burger on the sidewalk while toting around the most lovely flower arrangements leftover from the party... i'm ready to go dream about how awesome it is that i get to hug my husband tomorrow!
NSS - day two.
today started off better than yesterday. for example, i did not fall up the stairs into javits and spill coffee. i did see a guy ordering meat from the deli at the grocery store with a pomeranian sticking out of his backpack. when i told him how cute his dog was, he like didn't care or didn't seem to think it was interesting information. ANYWAY. we had a great day today at NSS! people are responding really well to the goddamn magical unicorn card. sam is cute. wine in front of the kitchen mirror at our air b&b. in bed before 10pm. that is all.
NSS - for real, for real.
WELP! today was day one of the national stationery show! hooooooly crap. we set out for javits around 9am (show begins at 10!). on the way, i stopped by the grocery store around the corner to grab coffee and morningtime treats for me and sam. while walking up the steps into javits i TRIPPED and spilled one of our beautiful iced coffees all over the concrete and also split the cup down the side so coffee was just slowly spilling out of the side of this cup while i laughed hysterically at myself -- NOTHING WEIRD! strangers literally applauded when i got up and successfully walked into the building. so. that was GREEEAT.
we had a few moments of calm reflection (i.e. secret silent panic) between booth visitors today and i sketched out a couple of prototypes for my new stationery line that i'll be launching soon:
...anyway...
today was pretty great. we talked to a lot of buyers, got a few orders, and saw some of our favourite designers all in one place. we're off to get manicures or wine or both! NEW YORK IS AWESOME! STATIONERY IS AWESOME! hooray!!
NSS - finishing the booth
today started off pretty nicely. sam and i went to the grocery store around the corner for fresh-baked raspberry pastries (omg......) and coffee. we got to javits by 9am and began the daunting task of FINISHING the booth. we didn't have much of a plan of attack, just a mess of things that in some way needed to end up on the wall and a plan in sam's head for how it should all look.
another friend of sam's joined us and helped hang shelves, assemble furniture, hang signs, and position product. things went so much faster with three people! we had our ups and downs in terms of available energy to complete the task, but overall i'd say we did a pretty awesome job putting that damn booth together. i'm thinking there's only like a 2-3% chance that any of it is currently sitting on the floor after falling to its death because we didn't adhere it to the wall well enough.
after everything was mounted to the wall and all the trash had been moved to the end of the aisle, the booth started to look pretty great. we got everything organized for tomorrow and taped off the booth (because people just do that at NSS? i don't know, i guess it's a thing? as if there's any way that would stop someone from going in and stealing all sam's stuff or photgraphing her product). sam had a celebratory swig of whiskey and we called it a damn day.
on our walk out of the building i saw anna bond of rifle paper co sitting in a chair looking at her phone... i swooned a little; i'll admit it. it's an honor for me to be in this place where all these great designers and illustrators are showing off their hard work. it's also a privilege to help my friend with her first time exhibiting at NSS. we've all got a big day ahead of us tomorrow! more to come.
NSS - the booth begins
what a super long day spent assembling a booth out of thin air!! sam ordered long strips of foam core and we tie-wrapped them to the existing pipe & drape setup provided by javits. it's not the most professional looking faux wall i've ever seen, but it's not bad considering we had no fucking clue what we were doing.
i enjoyed piecing the foam core together and figuring out creative solutions for our lighting direction issues and stuff like that. we left javits sometime after 8pm with all 3 walls up and more or less stable...and all the lights clamped and functioning. tomorrow will be another long day of hanging shelves, assembling ikea furniture, and displaying product! eee!
right now it's time to put delicious belgian food in our faces as a reward for all this hard work!
NSS - errands
today we caught a train to brooklyn, picked up sam's friends' station wagon, and then drove to who the hell lives out here?! to ikea and lowes to run some errands and get some supplies for the show. at lowes one of the items on our list was 10ft strips of moulding which we were going to cut into 5ft strips for faux shelving for the booth... but lowes was like, "yeah, we don't cut that..." so sam had to buy a saw to do it ourselves. other minor detail: we had to cut the moulding before we drove anywhere because the 10ft strips wouldn't fit in the car. some really nice dude/complete stranger saw us struggling with the saw in the parking lot and sawed all the wood for us.
we made our way back to another friend's apartment and spray painted the moulding black and played with the world's cutest twin babies. around 4pm we rushed to javits to see if by some off chance we would be able to get all our boxes into the booth a day early... and we got super lucky! tomorrow will be more official setting up and stuff.
a booth bitch's work is never done!
NSS - getting there
several months ago i made a commitment to my friend sam that i would go with her to the national stationery show and be her booth bitch/hype girl. i'm still not totally sure what to expect, but today we flew to new york to get ready for it! a dream for me would be to someday exhibit my own stationery line at NSS... and make a living being an artist... but for now i'm so happy to support a talented & hilarious friend however i can.
we woke up stupid early, got to the airport stupid early, ate oily omelettes at RDU, experienced the miracle of human flight, and then had lunch with a reeeeally calm dude (he said "no worries" at least thrice) whose apartment we're air bnb-ing for the week. this guy apparently used to work at le bernardin with fuckin' éric ripert and seemed to adore him as much as i do. so. that gave me warm fuzzies.
so anyway, we're here. we got some groceries. i'm going to go scour the adjacent blocks for absurd and trendy food like pizza cone...ttyl!
illustration: slowly coming together
it's crunch time! i'm pretty happy with how the illustration is coming together, but certain parts are driving me crazy... i've drawn a face on nu (the bride) like 3 times now, and i keep disliking it and painting over it. eeeeek!! this design is actually going to be a triptych... which i'm super excited to see...someday...if i can ever paint this face... le sigh.
rsvp
i woke up at 5 this morning for some horrible reason, so i started a rough draft of a possible illustration for remi & nu's rsvp card. incorporating the heart equation into their invites was remi's idea. seems so perfectly fitting for two engineers in love!
illustration: wedding invitations
i spent a few hours at my favourite coffee shop yesterday, sketching and painting and planning for remi & nu's wedding invitations. a blank piece of watercolour paper can be such an intimidating starting point! here's as far as i got with a concept for how to paint their names...
shared journals
last year i had this idea to share a sketchbook with my dad (who happens to be an artist and a huge inspiration of mine) as a way of keeping in touch in a more fun & personal way than phone calls, emails, and texts - i'd draw something and mail it to him, he'd draw something and mail it to me, no pressure or theme or deadline - just alternate pages in a journal that we share... it can go on forever! then i thought... this would be a great project to share with my husband (who is a writer) and other creative friends... and so far it's been amazing!! i highly recommend trying it. here are some pages from mine & matthew's shared journal -
illustration: wedding invitations
my super cute friends remi&nu asked me to design their wedding invitations. i couldn't be more honored (or excited)! i also designed their save the date cards which i'm pretty stoked about...
i want to have their invites printed on card stock. i found a really nice local photo lab that was able to scan the painting i made and print the save the dates for me on watercolour paper, but the final product was a little curved due to the lighter weight of the paper. for the invites i'll be experimenting with other printing services and i'm nervous that it'll require a fair amount of trial and error before finding a good enough printing company. i did a bit of reading online and several people recommended catprint.com & stationeryhq.com, so i'll be giving them both a try. i'm going to order the save the date design on card stock and compare to the original... i'll review both here!
illustration: heythanks!
we're so lucky to have a friend who doesn't mind stopping by our place to check on our cats edwin & albert when we're out of town for one reason or another. yesterday matthew & i spent a couple of hours at our favourite coffee shop and, between a cappuccino and a giant cup of earl grey, i painted this little guy to say thanks to kinsey! looking at this photograph of the painting makes me so anxious to get a nice scanner already! SOON.
get your website good
i overheard a coworker saying something about "you gotta get your cookin' good..." in reply to coworker#2 saying something about how coworker#1 never goes out to eat at work like the rest of us lazy slobs.
anyway i think coworker#1 is super wise. you gotta get your -whatever- good... then you won't feel as much like you're missing something or as helpless, you know? i feel that way about my website, but really i'm just happy i made it for now.
good story.
foreign language: harry potter et les interprétations erronées
i'm reading the first harry potter book for the first time... in french! i'm proficient in french, but have a ways to go before i'll be fluent so i'm fully aware i'm missing all kinds of details. i'm going to translate & illustrate my interpretations (and inevitable misinterpretations) here for you. so enjoy!!
mr. dursley got ready for work and took off in his car and noticed this cat reading a sign...and he was all like, "that's weird...cats don't read..." and then he saw this fancy man in town and he reflected for a moment on how he doesn't care for the flamboyant funky fresh youths and their emerald green capes. later, he stopped and got a donut and overheard some people talking about harry potter and he was totally in denial, like, "pssh... no way they're talking about the harry potter i know...for all i know that kid's name is harvey or something."