What to do...

...when you're supposed to be working (or blogging)--but you just can't get motivated?

So I've been taking lots of pictures of the things I've been doing when I should be working.

Item one: Googling yourself. You know you do it. But do you spend two hours doing it, looking up all possible combinations? And now with the business, there's even more to do. But that's how I found a fantastic thing! The design*sponge guest designer blog featured (drum roll please) me! Guest designer Molly Symmonds has a great eye, and titled her Tuesday Feb 20th post "splendid stationary," and filled it with beautiful paper treats harvested on etsy. I've got this blog on my links--and you should too! I'm working on a few more journals made from this paper, so stay tuned!

Item two: I bought a new couch. As in New. And the placement of a large piece of furniture in my living room-slash-print studio meant a major rearranging needed to take place. So I moved the living room around, which inspired me to actually put some stuff in my bedroom, which meant some stuff had to go in the kitchen. In the end, I had a bookshelf with nothing on it! And having recently perused the winter issue of Adorn magazine and seen the pretty workspace all brought together with paper...I thought I should get around to covering my storage boxes and lining the back of the shelves. My new color scheme is pink/orange/red/brown, and so I dug out scraps for covering the fronts of boxes, and found a pretty orange polka-dotty paper and a graphic flower print to do every other shelf. The effect is just lovely. I want all my shelves to look like this!

Item three: I posted a little while ago about the Bingo card album that I gave to Cecilia as a gift. Well, she took it to New York with her, and gave it to her publicity people, and it's in the works for publication in a magazine. The upshot is that I have a heck of a lot of paper to cut. This is just the beginning of it!

Item four: So this one is actual work. Kind of. My friend Sian finally broke down and decided to let me print her some business cards. But because she's a designer, she has a yen for perfection. Which means that I didn't have her typeface in the right sizes to hand-set her text. And while I'm waiting to receive the Ludlow slugs with her text, she nudged her partner Eyrich to get cards of his own. I got to mess around with a new paper (yay!) and get paid for it! I think they came out beautifully--and Eyrich actually had something with his name on it to take to a woodworking show.

Item five: I needed a "no-stress" art project to do while I contemplated money-making projects. So I decided to get on my project for The Gladiator, the super-duper art vending machine at the Langdon Street Cafe. It was, at least to everyone else, pretty obvious that I should make something with paper. But who wants to be obvious? I decided that Power Cuffs would be the best use of my time. There's been lots of talk about Wonder Woman lately, and I thought that declaring your art/love with felt and pretty cotton print wristbands might be cool.

Item six: Taking silly pictures of the cats. Because they're the only kids I'm going to be allowed to have for a while.

Here's Punk looking perplexed (or perhaps annoyed) at my pile of Power Cuffs.

And Sasha being very patient while I make her a spiky Lettra collar. (n.b. It didn't last very long. She nibbled the ends and then batted it under the couch.)

Finally Punk gave up, and just gave me the evil eye from the end of my work table.








Well, I guess that's all for now. But coming soon to my etsy shop: spring-themed letterpress cards, more bingo books, and more pocket journals like the one in the design*sponge feature.

And maybe, just maybe, a new blog.