This Mama's at the MoMA!

I cannot contain my super top secret any longer!

To set the scene:

Imagine me, leaping around the house, pigtails flying, singing "tra-la-laaaaa" a la Captain Underpants, bumping into doorways, with small children and a giant dog excitedly chasing after me.

Got it?

That's how thrilled I am .

Crafterall has landed at the Museum of Modern Art retail store in New York!

Currently, they're selling these lovely "Layered Love" cards in time for the mushy stuff to come next month.



Coming in February, these custom colored topography card sets in Sea Foam, Royal, Poppy and Violet.



It's been rough keeping this news under wraps until I knew the cards were physically in the store. I had told a few people after I was first contacted by a MoMA rep, but I made them swear to secrecy and threatened them with dollar store greeting cards for the rest of all their birthdays if they leaked the news.

While I was prepared to undertake the size of the order, I did climb a pretty steep learning curve related to the paperwork and shipping procedures necessary to conduct business with a bigger retail outlet. For instance, I now know what a bill of lading is and have created my own version of one to use again, as well as my own custom packing slip and invoice. I feel so... official.

So, many of you are probably wondering how this all happened. I suppose I can say that great product photos, original designs, and a swing toward to the modern side of styles was all it took, but I think luck played a very nice hand in this instance.

Back in late August, I was contacted via Etsy by a Paper Products Manager for MoMA Retail who was browsing the stationary on the site and was drawn to my topography cards. Luck. She requested some samples, I sent her a few topography cards in a variety of colors as well as a couple of other cards I was making at the time.

Around that time, I was transitioning from a discontinued line of cardstock to a newer one with more color options (luck), so a few weeks later, I sent more samples and a color swatch sheet for reference. The rep conferred with her people and got back to my people (well, just me, really), with four color choices for a custom set, and also mentioned interest in buying the heart cards for Valentine's day. Luck. She was also able to give me a heads up on the item count before the actual purchase order giving me ample time to complete everything. She has been a dream to work with since our very first correspondence and continues to cheerfully lead me through the big business processes. Major Luck.

So that's that! I've googled "Etsy" and "MoMA" together a bunch of times and have not yet read anything from anybody else like me who's been hand plucked like this. Has this or something like it happened to anyone else out there? I feel very strange, honored, and I'll say it again, LUCKY to be where I am.

And I'm happy as can be.

Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch, but it sort of feels like I've won a big award. So, in that light, I'll close this post with my acceptance speech full of thanks and dedications:

Thank you so much! Seriously, thank YOU! Yes YOU, reading this blog post right now. Because I know you care enough to come to my blog and read through this, I grow more confident and continue to create pieces that may catch the eyes of highfalutin retail shop managers. Thanks, too, to my friends and family who offer good criticism and support of what I do. Specifically, I thank my dear friend Kendra Zvonik who has held my hand through this whole process, who pulls my feet back down to earth when I float away in uncertainty, and who lifts me up when I wallow in frustration. I dedicate these happy vibes to my patient and supportive hubby and to my two crafty girls who've quietly watched me cut paper in my studio when they would have rather been playing hide and seek or wild cat rescue.

It feels so great to let this kitty out of the bag. Let's hope it enjoys a wild adventure out there!

What's New? I'll Show Ya!

Coming up for air here, after completing more than a handful of fun wholesale orders, fulfilling some awesome custom requests, and working on some NEW things for the shop. Imagine me, resurfacing form my basement studio, gasping for a breath, and with a huge, cheeky smile on my face. Life is good! This is a meaty post with lost of photos, so grab a beverage, find a comfy spot to sit, and read on!

First, a look at some custom pieces from the past two weeks. This is a "reverse" layered piece I cut of the Bahamas:



I started by cutting the white of the islands, layered those tiny pieces over the lightest shade of aqua, cut again, layered again, and so forth. As with most of my custom orders, I consider the region quite a bit while I'm working on it, and with this one, I enjoyed convincing myself that I was warmed by the equatorial sun as I carved out these island oases. It was well worth the time!



Then, I had a cool request for the Great Lakes.



While I disliked having to simplify some of the outlines for the sake of space, I thoroughly enjoyed creating the familiar silhouette of these massive bodies of water as well as learning about the bathymetry that lies beneath the surfaces of each lake. Who knew Lake Erie was so relatively flat, and that Lake Superior was spooky deep? (Well, probably loads of science and geology folks know that, but I learned something!)



One of the things I like best about working on custom orders is that they push me to try new things. Case in point, a custom order for Kim, a lovely mom and apple orchard owner. (Plug: She also has her own Etsy shop too!) She wants to start a gallery of apple-related art in a store on the orchard property, and she asked me if I could make a layered papercut with an apple as the subject. I could, and I did!



It was fun to use a variety of bold colors and to layer the paper differently than I usually do. I think it turned out well and I'm tempted to make more like this. Thanks, Kim!




Lastly, I worked my fingers to the bone finishing fifty of these little beauties for a delightful shop owner in Chicago. They are blank cards featuring a layered papercut of Lake Michigan with a little star representing the Windy City. Aren't they cool?



After a while, the shape of Lake Michigan began to resemble a strange, large-abdomen-ed insect, but filling in the shape with the depth layers helped dispel that idea. ;) Silly me.

New in the shop this month, the "Layered Love" cards are back for Valentine's Day and they're better than ever. Brighter colors, bigger hearts, and your choice of Poppy Reds:



Or Pinky Pinks:



I also introduced the new Teal colorway into the Topography piece collection:



It's lighter and bluer than the aqua scheme, and I really like it. As you can see in the piece above, I'm working more islands into my pieces as well. It takes more time to do this, but I believe the result is totally worth it.



Finally, I worked through a sketch I've had in my head for a long time and came out with these fun, new card sets. I call them "Googie cards" after the mid-century Googie architecture movement with all its funky geometry and groovy color palettes. Mine come in sets of two cards with one card layered dark to light and the other card layered light to dark. Far out, huh?

They're available in Sea Foam (where did I put that leisure suit?):



Harvest Gold (just like Grandma's oven!):



and Avocado, baby (reminiscent of that delicious shag carpeting you tore out of your old house):



It was nice to take a little break from non-stop topography and it has always been fun experimenting with new ideas. Man, I love what I do!

I Put the "Hole" in Wholesale

Pardon my papercutting pun; I couldn't resist.

Recently, I had the pleasure of accepting a wholesale re-order from the delightful folks at Shoppe Local. I'm excited by how quickly the request came after the initial order, and by the fact that the shop itself seems to be doing well. The downside, if there is any, is that it's a lot of work to turn out a big batch of topographic pieces and card sets, especially when I try to make my turn around time as short as possible. Still, I do enjoy my work and I love the business, so no complaining from me! This time around, I thought I'd snap a quick before and after shot of my work. Here is the stack of colored cardstock, white cardstock, white pre-scored cards, and my two well-traveled tools for cutting and sticking:



And here is the finished work, piled up once again on my studio table, this time as completed and packaged pieces ready to head to the shop:



I relish the satisfaction of completing a project like this. I'll admit that I do a little dance, raise my fists in the air, and make obnoxious crowd-cheer noises when I'm done. I figure I've earned it, right?

Making Lemonade, or in this case, Coupons

A while back, I ordered a batch of business cards. To my dismay, they arrived with all sorts of errors making them essentially unusable. But the cardstock was a very nice thickness and I felt like there must be something I could do with them. Ta-da! Coupons!

By covering up all the misprints and making them look more interesting, I transformed them into snazzy little coupon cards to include in orders from my shop. Here's how I make them:

I start by punching a one-inch hole on one side of the card. This isn't necessary to making them coupons, but it's an easy way to make them stand out.



And to show my true pack-rat/craftiness, I've been saving those little punched circles and piecing together a garland by gluing two together over a length of string. I couldn't possibly throw away perfectly good little circles! ;)

Next, I cut pieces of cardstock to fit just inside the length and width of the business card. This cardstock comes from the edges of the bigger sheets I use to make my cards and art -- yet another thing I save for just such a occasion. Using my handy-dandy adhesive dispenser, I get the punched card good and sticky.



Then, I center the cardstock over the business cards, and most of the letters and images are covered up!



Then, again because I like to be crafty, I punch the colored hole I've created once with a regular-sized hole punch, and twice with a small punch, so it looks basically like this:



Sort of lunar, don't you think?

Then I print out my text onto return address labels. One sheet gives me thirty stickers. When I created the labels on the computer, I rotated the text on one end to allow me to fold the label over the top edge of the coupon, like so:



A few minutes later, I have thirty cute, unique, and hopefully useful little coupons, and I've turned the lemons of my bum business cards into lemonade... or coupons... with a lemony zing, if you will. ;)



What do you think? Do any of you include coupons? How about other tricks for using misprinted or outdated business cards?

Thanks for taking a look. Happy crafting!

A Marvelous Little Mention

Well now, what do we have here?



Why, it's the vibrant, November issue of Mpls/St. Paul magazine. And how exciting that the cover invites readers to learn about local handmade goodies?! And here's the beginning of the feature:



And just a page or two away on page 63...



Why, there's a side panel singling out local artists who sell on Etsy!



And, wait! Did you see what you think you saw?



Indeed! There's my shop name! And a tidy little blurb about what I do. Woo Hoo! :)

Sorry for the cheesiness. I'm just excited about it. And there's even more news to come! Stay tuned...

Thanks to loosewirestudio for alerting me of this feature!
Coincidentally, my second purchase on Etsy was this lovely print from Studio Mela!

A, M, and AZING

My latest treasury features 16 amazing Etsy sellers who go way above and beyond the average listing photo and feature their items in print-worthy portraits. I've been collecting these over the last few weeks, and the selection was wonderfully abundant. These are off-beat, uneven, over-cropped, and downright inspiring. Enjoy!



Row 1: Yokoo, Meetalls, PunchDrunkPrincess, malam
Row 2: supplystar, moop, coughcoughchoke, fadedprairie
Row 3: ecologicalartist, 26olivestreet, lilfishstudios, rimadesigns
Row 4: CaptainCat, billyblue22, piprobins, doodlebirdie

A Tiny Stop-Motion Experiment

Along with about a ka-gillion other fun things, trying my hand at stop-motion animation has been on my list of crafty things to try for a long, long time. Recently, I've been nudged into giving it a go by the work of artist blu (check this out), and the intro credits to the awesome documentary Handmade Nation.

I knew I had to start small, so I just set up my little digital camera on a tiny tripod in my studio and made a few of my things "come alive." Following this tutorial, I used iPhoto to download the photos (all 56 of them) from the camera, then imported them into iMovie (the older and better version) where I strung them together and sped up the "slideshow" to create my first teeny tiny animated movie.

The quality is low, the sound is off, and it doesn't exactly tell a story, but it's a start, and it's got me eager to try something with more substance next time.



I'll sheepishly admit that that's me doing the lame "beat boxing" in the background. It's hard to find a decent little sound effect that covers a mere 5 seconds of video, so I recorded one myself.

I should also note that the three stylin' little mini moo business cards are from my dear friend, Kendra Zvonik. Do sneak a peek at more of her expressive art here.

So what do you think? Too short to tell? Have any of you tried this? Any ideas for the next one? Anyone think I have a chance to make a record deal out of my mad mouth skills? kidding.