handmade holidays

First, a little bit of sad news: last night I received an email from Sara at Made Boutique in Burlington, letting all of her consignors know that Made will be closing as of December 16. And with the very recent closing of Studio STK, where are the masses going to buy their handmade goodies and gifties?
Well, start in Burlington, VT, this Saturday at the Queen City Craft Bazaar. It's a juried show, so you know everyone there is pro. (I'm not rhyming on purpose, I promise.) Don't forget to stop by my table and say hi!Or if you're down in the Boston area, take a trip to Somerville on Sunday for the Paper & Chocolate open house and trunk show. Shelley at Albertine Press (and her neighbors across the hall, Taza Chocolate) have thrown one or two of these now, and in the spirit of the holidays, they've invited a few friends along for the ride. You won't regret it, I promise.

And if you haven't yet stopped by buyhandmade.org, do so now! Make the declaration, and tell the world why you will only buy handmade gifties this year.


Thanks to Sage and Amanda and Will at STK, and Sara at Made for great conversations and rockstar support. I'm sad to see your cool places vanish, but I wish you all the best of luck in the future!

i'm dreaming of...

...a white holiday season. And it's coming true. Today it's snowing in Montpelier--only an inch or so, but it looks white-white-white outside. But that's not really what I want to blog about...

Last weekend's holiday card workshop was a blast! Rik, Asma, and Jenevieve (my fourth student was stuck in the first snow of the season in Ithaca) totally took my hazy outline of the day and ran with it. But don't listen to me, check out the photos for yourself:

Asma jumped right on to the Vandercook to print the first lockup of her four--that's right, 4--step card. She used the Vandy for her wood type "XMAS" before moving on to the Kelsey to finish up the last three lockups.












In the meantime, Jenevieve got busy with her two-color cards, and found the time to print little gift tags for all of us, too.





Rik said that he was trying to avoid the "holiday-ness" of holiday cards, but I think these are pretty traditional....

Rik also found time to make a wood type exclamation-point sculpture to print on the Vandercook. It was a pretty challenging lockup, but Rik pulled it all together and came up with an awesome little decorative print!

Ah, the happy class. It was a full day's worth of work, but I think these three could have printed for another 8 hours if I'd let them. Thanks for the good work--it was a great first class! Check out the rest of the day's adventures here.

monday monday

How's this for the breakfast of champions, eh? Coffee and kettle stitch.

I'm up a bit later than usual today, having picked up my housemate Tara at the airport at 1 am. So I'm having my coffee and working...and listening to old Prairie Home Companion podcasts. Happy Monday!

P.S. I'l post photos from this weekend's letterpress holiday card workshop later--there are a lot of photos to go through!

week(s) in pictures

I'm finding it hard to keep up with the blogging lately. This is my first "busy season," and while I'm not totally unprepared, I am a bit underprepared. And very nearly out of time.

Here are a few shots from the past few weeks:
That's new friend Emma and old friend Meagan having a private bookbinding class in my studio. Here're the finished products:For Meagan's book, she brought fabric that she'd silkscreened, and Emma chose from my voluminous stash of pretty papers.

Last weekend's "Experience" workshop was a lot of fun! Sina, Jinkyung, Jenn, and Sarah were very laid back, and ready to experience whatever the day had to offer.
Sarah getting up close and personal with the Nolan proof press.Sina experimenting with layout on her prints.
Jinkyung, Sina, and Jenn locking up chase after chase after chase...

I stayed late after class to try to get the Vandercook #4 ready to print for this weekend's workshop: success!!
And while all that was going on, I got my first custom order on etsy--and it was shipping to Australia!
Two Bingo Albums, to hold 100 photos each...they're quite fat little books!

Coming up this week: Holiday Card workshop, printing my line of holiday cards, more prep for the Queen City Craft Bazaar and Paper & Chocolate trunk show, and hopefully not flubbing my first day as film projectionist at the Savoy!