NSS Wrap Up

So sorry for never getting those booth photos up this week. I grossly underestimated how wiped out I'd be from the show. All in all it was a good time. It was great to put a face to a name for buyers, vendors and press. I finally met Miss Grace from Design*Sponge in person, and she is just as lovely as expected. You should check out her coverage of the Show here, it is quite good! I also met another online friend, Emily over at Orange Beautiful / The Scoop. She too is lovely (and hilarious), plus she has some killer new letterpress goods coming out! Paper + Cup has always been a company that I looked up to in terms of how they have grown their business and such. We were lucky enough for them to be right next door to us. I loved seeing all their work in one place and Minhee and Truman... you couldn't have nicer people. They were great booth neighbors. Check out their show coverage here.
The show left me with a lot of thoughts and ideas and questions about the PIHNB line. I told Sasso I needed to go write it all down and think about it for a bit to which he replied "Of course you do". Above are pics of our booth. The tall one is me and next to me is Anna from Sub-Studio (beautiful silk screened cards, and she has a great new jewelry line called Brevity), Tara from Ink + Wit (sweet animal letterpress notes) and Janet of RSVP Press (lovely letter pressed bridal invitations). We got a lot of great comments on our booth, I think it helped that it was all white (including the hardwood floor) so our work really popped. I'm all about white space so I thought it was perfect. I'd like to just relax for a few days because next week the next 2 big project starts: the redesign of the new JHill Design site (yeah!!! a real content management system!) and the beginning of our wedding invites/website design. Ta-Ta, have a nice loooooong weekend! (ps.below are a few more pics from my wanderings around NYC).

Hola from NSS!

Well well well. After months of prep the big event is finally here. So lets see.... The drive from Boston to the Javits was totally beautiful. All these lush chartreuse parkways lined with what looked like big bonsai trees. I was nervous about driving into NYC but it was so easy, as was finding parking. I think I worried about everything so much that it all seems like a piece of cake now. I also have to say that - and I never thought this to be true - NYC drivers are a thousand times nicer than Boston drivers. I mean they actually let you switch lanes without trying to force you off the road and flipping you off.
I'm staying at the Courtyard Marriott in Jersey City for a few nights and I'm totally loving it. It is on the water, free wi-fi, a big room and next door is a great sushi place, a B of A, a Starbucks a great deli/market and the path train. What more could you ask for? Well there aren't any bathrobes, but I guess I can let that slide. Next year I'll book the whole week here and make sure to bring my own robe to complete the hotel experience. This morning I got a coffee and a bagel and sat by the water for a bit before I secluded myself to my room to watch the live web cast of my brother's graduation from college (congrats Chris!) and then it was back to the Javits.
So today we finished setting up our booth. There was a small snaffoo with the dimensions and it isn't quite as large as we were imagining. In the end with some compromise it looks very nice. Tight, but nice. It's been great hanging out with ladies that I've been talking online with for the last 5 months. We are right next to Paper + Cup and a few booths away from Knock-Knock so it has been great meeting /seeing companies that I so admire.
When I left tonight not everyone was done with their walls so I'll wait to show pictures of the booth until tomorrow. But here are a few shots of what I was enjoying while I was sitting in traffic tonight on my way back into jersey.

Oh, Much Appreciated!

And here is our 2nd new thank you note, Much Appreciated, she hails from Savannah, Georgia. This pattern is a "re-coloration" of this year's (May in fact) Savannah pattern. I love the pattern but just haven't been all that crazy about how the colors have printed in the past so I changed it to cream, a gold and a light grey-blue. I kind of love it now to be honest. I think she looks like a starlet.
The card was inspired by (other than Savannah) my dear Alston, who's last day was today :( Alston is from Georgia and we were talking about how sayings change through out the U.S. When she said people in Georgia say "Much Appreciated", I thought... "god I love that". I have a real thing for southern accents. I'm somewhat memorized by them (I'm also mesmerized by the accents of Southie - see the departed or gone baby gone - but just in a different way). I find Southern accents so charming and sweet. Miss Alston doesn't have much of an accent, but she does say y'all occasionally which I totally love.
I think this is going to be a really interesting thing to explore, the different ways people say things like thank you, happy birthday, congratulations and such in the U.S.
Well I am leaving you my darlings. The car is packed and I'm headed to New York for a week to show our goods at the Stationery Show. I'll be staying for the weekend at a hotel (I'm so looking forward to the bathrobes, cable tv, hbo and take out) sans Sasso and then at my dear Marie's place. I'm hoping to blog from the show so I can show you the process of setting up and the booths and our wares... I'm a bit nervous but more excited to meet so many ladies that I have been talking to online for the last couple years.
I just need to add this (WARNING: ANTM SPOILER)........
Ok, that was fair warning. I am so pumped that miss Whitney won. So so so pumped. It's nice to see a lady with a booty get some recognition. Plus she is gorgeous. Oh boy, what am I going to watch after Gossip Girl's Monday night finale... all my teenage shows will be over for the season. Ta-Ta

Oh Merci Loire Valley!!!

I thought I'd wrap up the Loire Valley today. She really is a very pretty pattern, May in our 2009 calendar. She also is the first card to debut in our new thank you note collection. We have a couple new collections that take the traditional note card (such as thank you) and change the wording to match the place of the pattern. So our French Loire Valley pattern becomes Merci. Tomorrow I'll show you our new Savannah thank you card. It has been really fun/interesting to think about the different ways that people say the same thing. Not just in terms of different languages, but even regional slang throughout the U.S.

Here is a conversation between me and Sasso last night, something funny:
(setting the scene: searching amazon.com for a fold able hand truck for the stationery show on a laptop at approximately 11:30pm in a dark bedroom)
Jennifer: Oh I'll get this one. Ugh, overnight shipping is $40 to get it here by Thursday. I'll go to Tarjet tomorrow to see if they have it in the store
Sasso: Just get it regular delivery
Jennifer: Um... I need it before we leave on Friday, duh.
Sasso: Where are we going on Friday?
Jennifer: (stunned silence - I mean I've only been prepping for this since January) New York. For the Stationery Show.
Sasso: WHAT!?!?! The show is this weekend?! Are you sure? I can't go! I have to work! I thought it was next weekend! We should really have a calendar for this stuff.
Jennifer (continued stunned silence while thinking about the calendars that I MAKE, one of which is hanging in our kitchen with all the NSS days marked on it) Why do you think I was packing everything up, got the car tunned up, took most of this week off and all that.
Sasso: I thought you were just really over prepared....

This is why I wear the planning pants in the family.

Valley of the Flowers

I had originally designed this pattern to be big, bold and kind of in one's face. But when I put it next to the other patterns for the 2009 calendar, it seemed really out of scale. So the whole thing got shrunk down. And in the end I like it very much, the only sad thing is that you loose a lot of the details in the flowers. I spent the majority of a dreary Saturday this winter drawing these flowers, each one blown up to like 800%. So I thought I'd blow them up a bit so you can see the detail in them here. The funny thing is I swear that I wrote down the name of each flower so that I could show you an original picture too... but apparently that was a good idea not followed through on.
Today my mom is coming in for a short visit and we are going to go wedding dress shopping. I'm not a big clothes shopper. I prefer to obsess over something online and then order it in 3 sizes and try it on in the comfort of my bedroom. Something a bit more difficult to do with a wedding dress. I'm looking for something white that is simple and costs less than my share of the booth fee to the stationery show. We'll see how it goes....

I'm drowning in boxes

There are so many boxes here that people probably think we're moving. So many I should probably bake Eric the UPS man cookies. A little break in the Loire Valley posts for a moment. This is for all those loved ones and friends who I haven't called / emailed back and for those clients that are like The Station-what? For those that have no idea what I've been doing and why I still can't go out tonight (but you can come come over to stuff envelopes!).


Postcards + Orderforms. Thanks to Brother Chris & Sister Becky for folding 500 of these things, just out of the goodness of their hearts. And to Becky for telling me to fold them the opposite way after I had already done 250, she was right.


Cute New Stationary Show Shoes and my most recent Arch Nemesis: Grand Theft Auto 4. I can't take the sirens anymore, it is driving me batty. Here lies Sasso's game map. I will not shred the map, I will not shred the map..... And there, a lovely box of glassine envelopes that are being labeled and then stuffed with said order forms and the line sheets... when Eric brings me my line sheets tomorrow.



God Bless Ikea. Seriously, we are outfitting the whole booth with Ikea goods. Thank god for cheap modern designed goods that are only 30 mins away.


Yeah for New Cards that come out perfectly printed!!! Greener Printer rocks.

Thanks to Alston I'll have some lovely press kits at the show. She came up with a lovely design when my stamping idea turned all "holly hobby". And here are all the labels for all the products.... sooooo pretty.

So there it is, that is what I've been doing the last few weeks. I need to stuff press kits, buyer packs and package samples too... so that is why I can't go out... but you can come here and help :)