i art a day.

First a quick update: The Vernal (Spring) Equinox is on Friday! YAY SPRING! Anyway, in order to celebrate and do a little shop spring cleaning the equinox cards have been put on SALE for a whopping 40% OFF! Can you think of anyone who’d love a little spring time hello?

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. Times may be slow, but the creativity in Philadelphia is still overflowing. A personal inspiration is Leah Mackin of leahmackin.com. Her small notebooks, creative patterns and adorable cards are lovely – and really excite the font geek in me. Check out her etsy shop here.

If only I lived in a larger place with more wall space! I’ve been eyeing up the Polaroid prints by Fiona over at Walking To Jerico recently. I love the black and white vintage look of the images mixed with simple clean and powerful color. When I have an in-home office one day I can totally see these on my inspiration boards.

Also, there’s a couple of new items in the madebyhank shop and the something’s hiding in here shop, some of our major local inspirations!

This week - although a quiet one – has been full of some serious thought given to this blog, the shop, the website, ideas and goals. At the moment, the most this entire thing can be is a side project, a part-time gig. Sure, I’m one of the thousands of people out there that has an idea and dreams of opening my own business one day, and getting up every morning with the enthusiasm to create something amazing. Well, I’ve got the enthusiasm down, but time and resources are just as important I’m finding out. Here’s what’s cooking:

In the shop:
1. Posted 4 new items! 3 bookmarks and one hardcover notebook. While the quantity of products is getting larger, the timing is not. All 3 bookmarks were posted Monday, and the notebook today. I’m told spacing it out a little is a good way to go, for a wider range of exposure on the site over time. Even if it’s been a little while since I’ve posted something new, I’ll have to exercise some patience with updating.

2. I purchased a spot in the Paper Goods Showcase today to generate some more traffic across my page and see just how effective it is. At this point, I’ve gotten a couple more hits than I had before, but no more hearts or sales than I started the day with it seems. I’m also thinking about purchasing a Books & Zines Showcase spot sometime next week to run a similar test and perhaps point shoppers towards some of my other categories of creations.

3. Some serious organizing has been going down. Excel has gotten a workout making Supply cost sheets that factor in price, taxes, and shipping of all of the materials I buy. I’ve also set up similar sheets that track the cost of materials + fees & shipping prices to make sure I’m selling my items for enough in the shop to break even.

4. Planning for the next set of creations has begun. This includes feasible projects, materials, time frames, and quantities. OY!

At the blog:
1. A first draft of an Editorial Calendar has been made. Basically, a plan of what I’m going to write about, and when I’m going to write it. The idea is that it’ll help minimize that blogger’s block that I get from time to time and hopefully post more often about things that are actually relevant and interesting (to me anyway)!

2. The continuous search and brainstorm about an all-inclusive and beautiful site is underway. Today I spent an extraordinary amount of time seeing just exactly what squarespace.com had to offer. More on that later.

So, with all of that in mind, I’m picking up and heading down to Virginia for the weekend to paint some walls and tackle a couple of little projects at the parents’ house. Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Yay! New Fonts to love!

Bon matin tout le monde! C’est un jour gris ici a Philadelphia, mais ce soir est une autre classe de screenprinting – et je suis tres heureux!

It’s nice to know that I haven’t completely lost all six years of that somewhat painful language training. I’m in the process of teaching myself Spanish, which isn’t terribly complicated, but I wish there was a larger audience to practice on. At the moment I’ve got a boyfriend who took Spanish in high school and can’t roll his r’s – and the occasional person I come across that would probably be insulted if I tried to speak to them in Spanish because of how poor my grasp is. So what to do? I guess I’ll just HAVE to go to Spain. ha.

Anyway, as I said above Part II of my screenprinting class is tonight – which I’m obviously giddy about (although I’m sure part of that giddiness is the caffiene from this morning’s coffee). More on that tomorrow (more photos!).

I’ve also registered for a spot in the Paper Goods Showcase on Etsy for Friday! I’m not really sure how much traffic it will generate – if at all, but I figured Friday was a good time since, well – no one really wants to be paying attention to work on Fridays anyhow.

Also – on my walk home from last Wednesday’s class, I passed the site for the new Barnes Foundation on the parkway. Demolition is well underway – and soon – construction!

What else? AH YES! New bookmarks will be posted to the Etsy shop this afternoon! My inspiration came from fabrics that I just couldn’t let go of, the realization that embriodery isn’t as hard as it looks, miss Kyla Bea’s bookmark creations, and the fact that I use old unattractive scraps of paper as bookmarks. I’m one of those people that’s usually reading 3 or 4 books at a time, so I should probably stock up on a few. Anyway check the iartaday shop out after 2pm est and you’ll see what i’m on about!

Good afternoon (or whatever time it is wherever you are when you’re reading this)! Sorry the posts have been slow this past week, but you know – snow/work/life happens. It comes and goes in phases. In my absence I’ve been plenty busy. I finally got my order from moo.com of new i art a day business cards (well, moo cards) and postcards! The postcards were posted to the i art a day etsy shop on Monday, and I’m so giddy about them:

6 Postcard Prints of Buenos Aires

Looking through all of the Buenos Aires photos again reminded me of the incredibly lavish Faena Hotel + Universe I visited while I was there, and of course I started drooling over their website and dreaming of warmer and more economically stable days. So help me god, I will spend a week at this place even if it sends me into debt for the rest of my life. I love how the entire place is soaked in red and dark woods, eliciting the passion and sensuality of the city. A couple of photos from their website for eye candy:

I know, RIGHT!? {guh} After looking at those again I hardly remember what else I was going to blog about. I give up. I’m going to Argentina.

Did you all have a lovely weekend? I definitely did! Quick recap:

Friday: Got off of work at 4:30! Cleaned house some and set-up work desk. Went to see Coraline! and loved it!
Saturday: Hung with the parents & boyfriend. Went to the Rosenbach museum & library and was very taken with the place. Went to see the show (remember that stage design thing?) again & then to the cast party!
Sunday: Belgian waffles, tea, made 2 notebooks (one as a gift), and unloaded the theater after the final performance in only 2 hours!

The ideas have been flowing just about non-stop and of course it makes me giddy as hell. Also on Friday, a couple of new items were posted to the shop including Equinox note cards and a framed Day at the Beach print!

Spring Equinox Card

FRAMED Day at the Beach Print

Today the Sweet Owl Stationery Set has been relisted on SALE and another hardcover notebook is getting listed!

Sweet Owl Stationery Set

Train Schedule Hardcover Notebook

wheeeee! Making things is so much fun. The bulking-up is underway and my thoughts have turned to craft fairs and perhaps a little gallery retail. Or maybe something like this – what do you think?

Today I’ve spent an absurd amount of time looking at file folders. Sure, it may seem lame to some, but really it’s just another kind of canvas. These days I’m really into the useful arts – and not so much industrial design, but paper arts. Notebooks are obviously the foundation of my curiosity – but I’m interested in expanding those ideas to other paper items as well. Enter the file folder. Do people even use the ubiquitous manila file folder anymore? And how can it be used to spruce up even the grayest cubicle (like mine)? The examples I found were rather impressive (for file folders):

In the little bit of spare time I’ve got I started sketching some ideas out as well. While the patterened and image files are very appealing, I’m interested in creating some thing slightly different. What is it we all think of when we’re in the cube? Escape. Bicycles, trains, boats, planes, hot air balloons. Hot air ballons have absolutely captivated my imagination as such an elegant and extravagant alternative mode of travel. Their basic structures and geometries are endlessly beautiful. And just like that, idea #1:

After the quick sketch ideas about color and composition have flooded my brain, as well as ideas for packaging and sets. More to come!

If I do anything well, it’s making lists. I’m a Virgo, it’s my thing. Anyway, I’ve been refining my list of ideas for the shop over the past couple of weeks while I was unable to actually work on any of them – and now that I’ve got the time to do it I’m all organized! (mostly.)

Some of my inspiration has come from:

SusyJack* Contemporary Paper

Nantaka Joy - Paper and Pattern

So far the short list of ideas includes:
1. Office Supply sets
2. Notebooks (obviously) – lined & unlined – in production & posted
3. Note cards w/ handmade envelopes  – in production
4. Bookmarks (inspired by these)
5. Photo Prints – in production & posted
6. Postcard Prints – in production

I’ve also registered for my first screen printing class starting in March! I’ve learned a little bit on my own, but can’t wait to get some formal instruction under my belt and hopefully some great tips and methods to help make the process run a little smoother! I love living in such a creative city. The next step is laying down some deadlines so I’ve got a good display in the shop for the craft bazaar I’m trying to get into – and of course some stock built-up incase someone decides to buy something =D

SO ready to get my making on this week. Also – those sparkly ruby red Converses should be arriving in the mail any day now!

Today I got the newest addition to the shop up, which I’m very much in love with:

The more of these hardcover books I make, the better they’re getting. This most recent batch (oh yes – more tomorrow!) has turned out really great and solidly made. Anyway, like I mentioned yesterday I made a couple of really simple hardcover books from the smaller pieces of paper created by making these medium sized books. A small batch that I put together ended up coming out pretty cute:

I’m just not entirely sure what to do with them. Sell them in the shop in a little bundle? Continue to make a ton of them and save them for a craft fair? Send them as thank you gifts with orders? Any suggestions? I’ve got so much extra paper for making them I’ll be tossing them into my bag to fold and stitch up on the bus ride to/from New York this weekend.

Oh yeah! I’m going to ravage NYC for about 24 hours from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon! So far I’ve decided to hit up the Central Park Zoo and the Whitney Museum before my return to Philly on Saturday since they’re pretty close to each other and I’ve never been to either.  Oh why is it only Tuesday? More goodies as the week goes on!