Adventures in homeownership and a sneak peek into my new bookbinding studio

A few months ago my husband and I purchased our first home, a cozy little bungalow built in 1935. Since moving in, we've been happily spending our days getting settled and enjoying our new surroundings. 

The picture above was taken just after we finished signing all the paperwork and were handed the keys to our new abode. As soon as the house was officially ours, we picked up our dog, Riviera, and brought her over to explore her new yard and house for the first time. I think she was just as happy about the new house as we were.

Although I haven't been blogging much lately, I've still been keeping busy.  Most of the rooms in the house are unpacked, organized, and decorated, and now that the weather is warming up we've been starting to do some gardening in our new yard.

I've also been getting settled into my new studio space. My studio is located in a downstairs bedroom in the house with a big window overlooking a flower bed with peonies and lilies. 

While getting my studio set up is still a work in progress, I'm pleased with how it's all coming together so far. I've hung up my collection of art show posters from Porter Flea and Handmade & Bound above my worktable, along with a few other posters by local printmakers. 

I also invested in a some new shelving to get things organized in my studio. All of my inventory now gets safely stashed inside the glass cabinets, and the open shelves display some of the first books I ever made while studying in Italy, prototypes of new styles of books I'm working on, and other lovely little books that I've collected from other book artists. 

My studio is also full of plenty of books in progress. I've been creating new styles of journals and photo albums in preparation for the upcoming marketplace at Thistle Farms next weekend and the next Porter Flea on June 7. I'll be posting more updates here in the coming weeks, but in the meantime be sure to check out  my Instagram photos for more images of the new house, our garden, and of course, beautiful handbound books!

Art (and dogs) in the Park

This weekend marked my very first craft fair, and overall it was a very enjoyable and successful experience. I met some great new people and saw some impressive work by other artists. One of the highlights was discovering that my booth was right next to those of Dolan Geiman's mother and sister, further adding to the list of coincidences mentioned in this post.

Leading up to the event, we were worried about the weather; it stormed on Friday night and there was a threat of rain for the weekend as well. But aside from a brief rain shower on Saturday afternoon (which caused us to quickly rearrange our booth by pushing all of the tables toward the center of the tent) and temperatures in the high 80's on Sunday, we really lucked out.



One of the great things about selling at the craft fair, as opposed to just selling online, was that I was able to get a sense of what products people seemed most drawn to as they were browsing in my booth. In addition to my handmade journals, photo albums, and wedding guest books, I was also selling handmade notecards, printmaking, photography, and my wine bottle gift bags made from shirt sleeves. I was surprised by how popular my prints were, especially "Swimming with the Jellies" (which is my favorite as well). Also, my wine gift bags were a huge seller on Saturday. I sold almost half of the bags I had in stock the first day, but not a single one the second day. In general, the words of wisdom I heard from a veteran craft fair seller rang true: people shop on Saturday and browse on Sunday.



We found out the day before the show that Art in the Park was a pet-friendly event, so we decided to bring our sweet brindle bullmastiff along. Riviera was a huge hit throughout the weekend, bringing tons of visitors to our booth. There were all sorts of dogs (and even one pet snake) in the park this weekend, from tiny puppies to huge great danes.



My husband Tony helped me to make this bulletin board that displayed my linenlaid&felt logo, and some other information about my business. In the upper left, there's a short bio about me, which includes a description of my study abroad experience in Cortona, Italy where I learned the art of book making. We also included samples of linen, laid, and felt paper textures, a guide to the different binding styles of the books that I make, and info about custom orders.

I would also like to mention that Tony was a huge help with the preparations for this event. He helped keep track of my inventory, ironed my tablecloths, packed up our cars, set up my tent and tables, kept me company in my booth the entire weekend, and so much more. I could not have done this show without him, and I am so thankful for all that he contributed.



While sitting at my booth throughout the weekend, I worked on binding several books together as a demonstration of my craft. I made several Japanese stab-bound photo albums and some Coptic-bound journals and wedding guest books.



During the past month I had been so busy getting ready for the craft fair that I hadn't added many new products to my Etsy shop, but I will be adding a whole bunch of new products in the upcoming week. Today I photographed some new books, notecards, and wine bottle gift bags, so as soon as I write the descriptions they'll be up.



I would love to hear what all of you think of my craft show set up. Since this is the first show I've done, we decided to keep it simple at first, but I'm sure there are things I can do to make it better next time around. Please feel free to leave your critiques and suggestions in the comments.

Snip, snip!

I've always been a long-haired kind of girl. I even grew my hair out so I could donate 14 inches to Locks of Love during college. But ever since I saw these photos in the September issue of Real Simple magazine I've been considering a shorter style. I finally took the plunge this weekend, and this is certainly the shortest my hair has ever been. I was a little unsure about it at first, but I think it's growing on me.

In fact, my hair is even shorter than my husband's right now (although not for long; he's got a haircut scheduled for tomorrow). And he was kind enough to take these photos of me as we walked our dog in the park after work today. The fabric flower headband is from J.Crew, and I think it works nicely with the shorter hair.

The photo below is from our honeymoon in Portland, Oregon last summer. That haircut probably comes in second in terms of my shortest styles. I kept my hair long for our wedding so I could get an up-do, but I stopped by Rudy's Barber Shop on the very first day of our honeymoon to try something new.

Mantel Makeover

Ever since we moved into our apartment, the display of artwork and objects above our mantel has been in a constant rotation. We'd never been quite satisfied with it, so my husband and I would rearrange it every few months, only to decide that it was still in need of a makeover. I think this time we've finally got it right.

As part of a wedding gift for my husband, I bought a Dolan Geiman gift certificate (which came with some neat coasters -- see top right photo -- because of a special promotion they were having at the time.) A few months after the wedding we finally had a chance to sit down, browse Dolan's Etsy shop, and pick out a new print for our apartment. We selected the print "Map Blue Highway Yellow Cornhusk." Since getting it framed, the print anchored the design of our mantel. (By the way, Dolan just launched his spring line of artwork, as I wrote about yesterday. Check out his new work here.)

The colors in the Dolan Geiman print nicely compliment the color scheme of my mom's painting, so we moved it above the mantel as well. The framed photograph on the left is one that my husband bought from an art student at Hillsdale College. The red vases are from Crate&Barrel, which we bought with a wedding gift card. I made the raku-fired piece of pottery during college and the vintage camera came from an antique mall here in the Shenandoah Valley. The two glass jars are filled with antique letterpress type (which was part of a wedding gift from two great friends, along with an antique tabletop letterpress machine).

Above you'll see my husband, Tony, and our dog, Riviera, checking out our new arrangement. Tony and I adopted Rivi in August from the animal shelter. She's a seven-year-old brindle bullmastiff, and she's truly the sweetest dog I've ever known. And yes, she's almost always sticking out her tongue.

Some other highlights from the odd little zone in our living room that once housed a fireplace include:

• an antique projector found at a Michigan rummage sale;
• a stack of old books from Athens, GA and Baltimore;
• a vintage fan from Detroit;
• one of my mini monoprints, an old photo of the Brookfield Zoo, and a letterpress postcard held in place by button magnets that I made;
• and a letterpress poster featuring a Vonnegut quote. It was made by Tony and Chase on a recent trip to Typecast Press in Baltimore. You can read all about it here.

Tony and I have also been thinking about photographing the rest of our apartment and putting together a photo tour to post here. It would be sort of like the Design*Sponge sneak peaks, although I'm not promising our apartment can compare to any of those amazing homes. I've also been thinking about posting pictures of my little studio as well. What do you think? Would you be interested in this?