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....

It's a Chateau Dahhhhling...

I wrote about my love of the word Villa in my Cabo wrap up, well I have the same affection for the word château (and also Chalet). Basically any word that is a bit more romantic and dreamier than "house". There were 3 châteaus that I thought of when I did this pattern.


1. Petit Hameau: The original inspiration for the patten was this little rustic place built for Marie Antoinette at Versailles. Do you remember in the movie when Kirsten Dunst was running around in tall grass in the most beautiful sun light glow? Then she picked strawberries and poured the most delicious looking cream from a pitcher.... mmmm. After checking it out I decided i wanted it all to be a bit more in your face and not so delicate. So I went on search for more châteaus.


2. Château de Chenonceau: The château was a gift from King Henry VIII to his mistress Diane de Poitiers. The place is so magical the way that it extends over the river. It has some amazing geometrically designed gardens too. You can visit the château's website here.


3. Château de Villandry: The gardens here are amazing. There are all sorts of geometric shapes including one part that is all hearts, which is where I got the inspiration for the hearts in the Merci pattern. You can visit their site here and see some amazing pics here.

I wish someone would say "Bonjour Mademoiselle!" and whisk me off to a château today. It has been a rough couple of weeks. The kind that makes you say, "Holy crap. The universe is trying to kill me!!" It has involved print proofs gone awry, burned hands, head colds, unresponsive vendors, torture via dentist, crazy client phone calls, a broken cell phone (which is just plain maddening), and one mess otherwise known as our engagement party / wedding.
But I'm not gonna let it get me down no more! The sun is out and even if I have to sit in my yard (with a box of tissues) instead of a château's that will do for now. To make things even better Eric the UPS man just brought all the new Thank You, Hello! and Holiday cards to me. The printing is SO beautiful! Lots of new stuff to show you soon.

Floral Couture

I write this with a throbbing face, cheek really I guess. My tooth had been aching and I had to go to the dentist. I made my last minute appointment thinking, "oh this is no big deal... I can do it in the A.M, have the whole day to work and then I can still make that Design Salon event I've been looking forward to in the evening." So I went, shed a few tears (you would too if you had 18 teeth pulled as a young one), and when I was leaving the (wonderful) dentist said to me "so once the Novicain wears off this is going to hurt at least twice as much as that root canal you had. Here, go get some Vicodin." Oh it appears I gravely miscalculated my procedure. Which is why I'm sitting at home with a throbbing face.

To take my mind off that (and how I really can't buy a M.J bag from the employee sale cause I just dropped the equivalent at the dentist) I thought I'd write a bit about the beginning influences of the Loire Valley pattern. Well, it was all those flowers over flowing the Spring runways. I mean they were EVERYWHERE! I could have filled an entire sketchbook with inspiration, forget just a few pages. Here are a few glimpses of my floral sketchbook pages.

Matthew Willamson, Prada, and Balenciaga. Balenciaga was the big time influence. All those cool floral patterns, and those crazy black and white gladiator sandals totally inspired the Chester, England pattern (I want those sandals, I know... where would I wear them... but I want them anyways). So here, take a look.

Introducing Loire Valley

Soooooo.... I need to note that right now I am sitting in the studio with all the windows open getting a fantastic cross breeze of warm air. So warm that when I walk through the kitchen I check to see if the stove is on, I've been doing this all day. The scent of a neighbor's BBQ have been wafting in... I've been waiting for this weather to return since November.



A while ago I wrote about what was inspiring some new patterns. The first new pattern to be released is Loire Valley. She is French and very bright (as in colorful, though if she was a person I think she'd also be very smart and clever), and just bursting with flowers. The pattern was inspired by the flowers that flooded the Spring 2008 runways (especially the Balenciaga collection - swoon), a few chateau gardens in France and the idea of a colorful fruit basket (not sure why but that popped in my head the whole time I worked on this pattern).
This is also the first release of the new Thank You card line, which Loire Valley graces on the Merci card which you can see here. The cards are sold as singles as well as in packs of 6 and they are all enviro friendly as mentioned before.
This pattern had so many great inspirations and I can't wait to share them all. I know posting has been a bit light. Sometimes it is tricky to get pumped up about the inspiration for patterns I did like 18 months ago, so I'm really looking forward to sharing the 14 new patterns I have with you!

On another note my dear-dear-dear-lovely intern Alston is leaving me in Mid-May so I'm on the lookout for another talented design intern. If anyone is interested please email me at jhilldesign (at) mac.com for more details. One of the big projects for the summer is the rework of the Studio's website which will soon have a wonderful database driven shopping cart (adios paypal buttons!). Good experience and fun :)