Happy Birthday card

I would like to note that it just happens today is the birthday of one of my best friends in the whole world! Happy Birthday EBD! Anyway, I came here to share a new card design! Here are some process photos – I started with a sketch and then transferred it to linoleum, mounted the linoleum on a special block of wood, and cut the design into the linoleum block:

linocut project

here’s some test prints using the finished linoleum block:

card design in process … messy work table!

aaaand here’s how the finished card turned out!

it’s up for sale in my Etsy shop now…

picnic holiday craft fair

Picnic holiday craft fair, 2010

Picnic holiday craft fair at the Irish Heritage Center in Portland, Maine. December 11/12, 2010. music, crafts, friends, awesomeness! It was really snowy out but the place was jam packed despite the weather. I had an awesome crew of booth neighbors (and because space was tight, we really got to bond!): Cassie Bouton and her awesome hand-printed housewares (and her beautiful and very well-behaved newborn baby), Allison of Drawn Onward, Dunja of DoonYaYa, and a very nice vintage dealer whose business card I have misplaced. Thanks, Picnic, for being awesome again!

Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago

Morris & Essex booth. Renegade Craft Fair, Chicago

Just a few weeks after our Maine craft show extravaganza, we packed up the suitcases and headed off to Chicago for another round! I printed up TONS of new t-shirts and packed them ALL into suitcases (heavy!) and was forced to get my whole craft-fair routine significantly more organized in order to fit myself and all my stuff into an airplane and not frazzle my brains too much in the process. I think I am getting better at the craft fair routine every time we do it. Renegade Chicago is a huge event! It started out a little rough on Saturday, it was raining and I wasn’t feeling well and setting up was kinda not that fun. There were LOTS of shoppers but most of them turned out to be browsers and it felt like we weren’t selling that much. But by the afternoon the sun was peeking out, things were getting funner, people started buying stuff, Mike brought me a nice cup of sangria, then Dan and Kristi and Julia stopped by to visit… by the end of the day it was all just great. Sunday was a fantastic day from beginning to end, sunny and lovely and kind of overwhelmingly busy. I did manage to slip out of the booth and wander around the fair for a while and saw all kinds of awesome stuff. I’m sure I am forgetting lots of exciting things but here are the favorites I can remember:

Shapes & Colors

Shapes & Colors. These guys were super cute, their printed pillowcases and bags are simple and bright and perfect (great color palette!) and of course I was attracted to them because that is the name that Julia and I picked out last year for the awesome website that we never really made. But that’s another story.

up in the air somewhere

beautiful ceramics from up in the air somewhere

Beau Ideal stationery

Beau Ideal whose work is a lot like mine, only awesomer!

Maryink tees

I’ve admired Maryink t-shirts for years, but never bought one – I got to meet Chris and I bought this one, only on a dark blue t-shirt.

Winter Session booth

really cute canvas bags and aprons by Winter Session

La Familia Green

La Familia Green, whose awesome cut-paper mexican folk-art posters caught my eye on some website years ago – it was exciting to meet Mollie and of course she is really nice and sweet.

Greyhound rescue

And Mike of course made friends with the great folks at the Greyhound rescue.

renegade handmade storefront in Chicago

At the end of the fair I went over to chat with the folks at the Renegade Handmade shop, and they took a bunch of my cards to sell in their shop year-round. Awesome!!

Picnic Craft Fair in Portland, Maine

Morris & Essex booth

August 28th. Perfect weather, amazing and beautiful day in every way. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! And special thanks to my sister Amy and to Paz, who both stopped by to help out! And to Mike, who worked all day long at the booth with me! We sold tons of stuff, had a fantastic day, and ate the best pulled pork sandwiches and iced teas from the food carts. Highlights: met and traded with fellow vendor Colleen Kinsella, who is a friend of my sister and makes really great prints; we traded some of my shirts for some of her prints! Erin Flett, who makes gorgeous pillows and prints, and who I met via Etsy – she lives just a few minutes from my parents’ house in Gorham!

Erin Flett Booth – Picnic Portland

And I got to meet and trade work with Jennifer Judd-McGee of Swallowfield, whose work I have admired since I stumbled across it on the internet a few years ago and thought “that’s so cool, she’s from Maine!”

Swallowfield

Plus Diane of Ferdinand, of course, who is awesome and makes awesome stuff and helped to organize this perfect day.

t-shirts from Ferdinand

There was great music all day too. And nautical fun times with Meghan, Emily and Kit at the after party. Best day. Only downside? I came down with the worst cold the next day!

new screenprinting project

Printing wrapping paper!

I’m starting a new project… hand-printed wrapping paper! The first screen is coated and drying in the darkroom, I’m waiting for it to dry so I can shoot my first design. My whole darkroom/studio setup is still so new, I’m nervous about whether it’ll work on the first try, here’s hoping it does! Soon I’ll have images of my new project to share… Hoping to finish a bunch of wrapping paper (hopefully at least three designs!) in time to sell at the Chicago Renegade Craft Fair in September!!

renegade craft fair

June 5th and 6th we headed to Brooklyn to set up the Morris & Essex booth at the Renegade Craft Fair – it was a great time and a big success!! Thanks a million to everyone who stopped by and visited, bought stuff or said hello, and ESPECIALLY to EP and Caroline who hosted us and all our stuff at their beautiful apartment AND put in tons of work helping us set up the booth and sell things and bringing us snacks and generally making us happy! (and a special thanks also to Leslie who stopped by to feed us freshly-baked strawberry rhubarb pies, just at the very moment when I was about to die of hunger!)

Morris & Essex booth -photo by Lisa! thank you!

this post is a work in progress, more details to come, about our trip and the fair…

studio

I have been working like mad on the new house! So much to do, and the summer is flying by already…

studio room: before

We picked a big room upstairs from the kitchen to be my studio. It’s got six beautiful windows and lots of open space. On the negative side, the floor is in bad shape, it’s got damaged old wood planks with a few big gaps where you can see through to the kitchen below, all covered over by vinyl flooring which is peeling and curling and torn away in a few spots, then covered in some places with a second layer of peeling and curling vinyl, it’s hideous. And the walls are covered with seventies-style fake wood paneling which someone partially painted forest green and then gave up and just punched a few holes through the wall instead of finishing the paint job. They even painted over a few random sections of the cruddy brown trim with what looks like black nail polish.

ugh.

I don’t need my studio to be very fancy at all, it’s just a place for making messes anyway, and we’re supposed to be focusing our renovation efforts on the kitchen and bathroom downstairs, so the studio is like the last priority for real renovations. But the ugly splotches of green paint were going to drive me crazy, so I decided to do a quick and dirty paint job just to give the place a little bit fresher look.

first order of business: cover up those crazy patches of green paint. I can’t possibly concentrate on work if I have to look at that crazy paint job all day.

I even primed everything and then painted it all some historic shade of greenish-blue. (I will admit that I have a strong urge to paint EVERYTHING in the whole house greenish-blue or bluish-green or robins-egg blue or dusty aqua or anything along those lines. I am going to have to use a lot of self control to avoid making the whole house look like a swimming pool.) Anyway, I haven’t totally finished painting but it’s looking a lot better already. I was in a rush to get working so I could print up a bunch of t-shirts and new cards for the Renegade Craft Fair, so I had to start filling up the studio and working in it even before the painting was done. I swear I am going to finish the paint job soon!

it’s not all painted yet, but at least one entire wall is done…

silkscreen printing table

silkscreen set up! My first screen made using my new light table!

I found some small shelves for free on craigslist, and got some more cheap sturdy shelves at a big box store (ugh). Shelving is the one thing I can never find used at the salvation army or on craigslist. My parents gave me a beautiful, incredibly heavy, big long work table (I think maybe an old army mess table?) which they’d in their basement for eons. The table-top is too rough to print on directly, so I made a portable printing station with a smooth, flat slab of wood and silkscreening hinges. I covered the wood with a layer of clear acetate so it’ll be easier to keep the surface clean. For drawing at my worktable, I found a super comfy giant office chair by the side of the road in Limington. For drying printed t-shirts, I strung a clothesline across the back of the studio and tied little loops for hanging clothes hangers at regular intervals. For drying printed cards, I found a beautiful folding drying rack by the side of the street in White Rock, what luck! (I have a sharp eye for free stuff, right?) The biggest studio project was the light box which I need for exposing photo-sensitive emulsion to create my silkscreen stencils. It’s just two long fluorescent shop-light fixtures inside of a big box, on legs, with a thick sturdy glass tabletop. I built one a few years ago when I was setting up my first studio in New York, and it took me a few days in the workshop with my dad’s help. But this time I whipped it up in just one day, in my dad’s workshop, with just a little help from Mike to screw in the light fixtures that evening. And it works!

building my new light table (in Richard’s workshop) … and the finished product!

At the moment I’m using the icky, windowless downstairs bathroom as my darkroom though I would like to eventually build a little darkroom in the closet attached to my studio, I just need to do some major clean-up in there, and hang a door. And I’m using the garden hose for all my washing-up needs, but one day soon we will get running water and plumbing in the studio! I found a utility sink in the back yard at limington (perfect!), and my parents have been trying to get us to take this old claw-foot tub that’s been sitting in their back yard in Gorham for thirty or forty years at least. I think the tub and sink will go side-by-side on the back wall of the studio, by the chimney. I can use the sink for cleaning up small stuff like paintbrushes, and the tub will be excellent for washing out big screens. And gorgeous too. I am going to have such a great wash-up station! The studio’s definitely not finished but it is really exciting to have ONE room in the house that is actually functional. I spent a lot of hours in there during the past few weeks, working late into the night. It’s a great space already.

busy designing

I’ve had no time to post anything because I’m so busy working! My online Typography classes at the Academy of Art have just finished and I’m reviewing final portfolios (they all arrived in the mail this week!) and finishing up paperwork, submitting final grades. I’ve got some more freelance work (t-shirt graphics for OshKosh), and the biggest project of all, I’m working on new Morris & Essex products for the upcoming Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn, which is just one week away!

I’m developing new t-shirt and greeting card designs, so I’ve been working on new design ideas, selecting a few classic favorites to bring back, researching and ordering t-shirts, and building my new screenprinting studio so I can start working! I built a nice big wooden light table for exposing my screens, I built a new printing station with screen hinges, I found a great big old mess table in my parents’ basement to use for a printing table, bought screens and screen-making materials and emulsion, inks, squeegees, etc. I used to have all of these things in my studio in Brooklyn but when I moved to Argentina I had to sell them all so I’m starting over again from scratch, sigh. Cleaned out the studio space at the new house and started priming and painting the walls, set up shelving to store all my supplies, unpacked boxes of art supplies, set up a drying area to hang wet shirts, got the whole studio set up and I’m printing now! I’m having a bit of trouble with the photographic process, namely my “darkroom” (a windowless bathroom) doesn’t seem to be dark enough and sometimes causes me problems, hopefully I’ll figure out how to make that work a little better this weekend. I’ve printed a few of my designs already and I’ve got a bunch more to go!

And I’ve got new card designs too… two brand-new designs, letterpress printed. So I’ve ordered the paper and custom-mixed ink colors, had type-high metal plates engraved from my designs, and I’ve been driving out to Scarborough to work with my letterpress printer, Mark at Dunstan Press, each day, basically standing by the press with him and making sure each stage of the printing process is going well, colors are correct and registration is perfect, etc. It’s really fun to see it all happen! I’ve ordered envelopes and little clear boxes and sleeves for packaging the finished product. I’m hoping I’ll have time to do some screenprinted card designs too, we’ll see how next week goes. It’s going to be a crazy week.

Back to work! Photos and more details to come, probably not until after the fair is over!

old wallpaper

we’ve been absolutely totally busy working on the new house all the time! Lots of details and stories over here: http://www.limingtonfarmhouse.org/blog/ among other delights, It’s been great discovering layered bits of old wallpaper around the house.

peeling back the layers of wallpaper on the old chimney in the kitchen

a tiny snippet of wallpaper in the attic

the old chimney in the kitchen was covered with wallboard; behind that we found many layers of wallpaper and horsehair plaster over the bricks!

old wallpaper in an upstairs closet

in an upstairs bedroom

more wallpaper from the kitchen

layers of wallpaper in an upstairs closet

We got a tour of our neighbor Mike’s place, also a historical house undergoing renovation. He had some great old wallpaper too!

at our neighbor Mike’s house

at Mike’s house

bright viney pattern

making up new pattern design stuff for my portfolio!

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