valentine

working on a new valentine design today! I’m so excited. I hope I can get it done in time to sell for Valentine’s day – I’m afraid I’m cutting it a bit close :/ On Friday I worked up the design in Illustrator, inspired by the cut-paper-valentines that my mom and I always made together for each other, family, and all my classmates when I was in elementary school. I also just stumbled upon Hans Christian Andersen’s wonderful paper cuts, so that was on my mind while I was working on this too. Anyway, today I will transfer the finished design onto a linoleum plate and cut it out with lino-cut knives. Hopefully tomorrow I can drop it off for Mark to start printing on his letterpress!

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…

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!

back to school / time zones

I’m about to start teaching classes again! Last semester I taught an Intro to Typography course at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco! (via their online BFA/MFA program) and this semester I’ll be teaching two classes, both Intro to Typography, one for undergraduates and one for graduate students. I’m excited!! I’m trying to do my preparatory work and plan the semester, get everything organized and sorted out before the students log in for their first day of school.

As part of my preparation I’m trying to sort out how many time changes we’ll go through in the coming semester, and it’s a lot! For September and part of October, BsAs is 4 hours ahead of San Francisco (1 hour ahead of New York). Then Argentina starts Daylight Savings Time sometime in October (not sure when. it’s a controversial political issue here and I think politicians are still arguing about the date), so then BsAs is 5 hours ahead of San Fran. Then later in the month, Daylight Savings Time will end in the Northern Hemisphere, so then BsAs is 6 hours ahead of San Francisco. Then there’s the eternal question of whether Argentina might end up canceling daylight savings time after all… because Argentina is just kind of flaky like that.

Honestly…? UGH. f*#% Time in general and Daylight Savings Time in particular.

Anyway – excited to be starting classes soon!

can’t keep up!

Lots of exciting and awesome things have happened in the past few weeks/months, and all of these exciting things have been keeping me very very busy. Too busy to blog! I’d like to go back and write a more detailed entry about each of these things, but for now here’s a quick list:
-October: weekend at the beach in Uruguay with Julia and friends.
-November: taking Level 5 spanish course at the University of Buenos Aires aka La UBA
-November: got the worst flu
-November: Amy Sawyer came to visit, yaaayyy!!
-November: 8-day trip to Salta and Tucuman provinces in the north of Argentina
-November: nice mention of Morris & Essex on Design*Sponge, which brought me tons of card orders and wholesale inquiries! i’ve been working like a sleep-deprived madwoman to fill wholesale orders and keep up with it all. I am my own sweatshop.
-December: adopted a new puppy! we wanted a friend for Emmylou Elbows, who seemed terribly sad and lonely and scared all the time. new puppy is adorable and fearless and nameless. we’re thinking of calling her Inga Josefina.

i’m working on…

new card designs! updating my website! organizing my hard drive!
i don’t have any freelance projects right now :/ which is something that i kinda always want – because i love having creative time to myself!! – but also scary because i need the paychecks, ya know. and i don’t know when i’ll have work again. freelance life is such a constant roller-coaster. anyway, this down-time is filling my mind with lots of fun project ideas. but for now, i’m trying to focus on Morris & Essex. I’ve made some sweet new card designs (see above!) and i am now updating my website with the new designs, and thinking about how I can sell more cards! publicity is the hardest part, but it’s also probably the most important. of course, i’ll post all the new stuff when it’s ready to share.

i’m working on…

making a new portfolio of my design work. i’ve been putting this off for a while but i’m finally making it happen. it’s a ton of work!!!