Wis Design

Wis Design was started by two Swedish designers and is a collection of some pretty rad furniture and accessories. You may remember that I have a slight fetish for dressers, so it should come as no surpise that I would love the chest of drawers above.

A photo and a link: Samuli Heimonen

Paintings by Finnish painter Samuli Heimonen.

blue

Yesterday the sky was perfect. The weather here has started to change and it feels like fall is coming, quicker than I thought it would. And fall has a way of bringing crisp blue sky broken up by giant clouds. Not the kind that cover everything in gray. The kind that seem to stretch for miles without blocking the sun. It was a beautiful day to print.

I hope you have perfect sky this weekend. See you on Monday.

A photo and a link: David Linneweh

Gorgeous paintings, drawings and prints by David Linneweh. These remind me a bit of screen prints - the flat bold areas of color and minimal use of shading. And I particularly like contrast of the delicate pencil lines.

home again home again

We're back from the gift show and it was really great. After we packed up the booth we spent the day visiting the NYC shops that picked up Pistachio Press. It was so exciting to see where our cards will live when they leave the studio!

During the trip we had some fantastic meals, many of them eaten with friends we don't get to see enough. And afterward, we'd get to walk back to the apartment as the sun set. My favorite time of the day is when the light of the sun hits the buildings just right and makes them glow.

But, as awesome as this show was, I have to say that the last few weeks have been comepletely exhausting. I fell asleep on the couch while trying to respond to emails the night we finally got back home. When I started Pistachio Press, I had no idea how much time email would take up.  My goal is to try to catch up on the rest of the messages that came in while I was away and then file my inbox into official folders...almost 2700 messgaes to sort through in just one of my inboxes. Can you tell I like to save things :) That number makes me nervous, but it also makes me determied to have a manageable inbox by the time the semester starts up again. Here's to making mid-year resoultions!

NYIGF Day 3

My final post about the show is up on Poppytalk. We just got back from dismanteling the booth and I'm exhausted! It's been a long week, but a good one. The show was a great success for us and we're happy to have been picked up by some pretty amazing shops. It was also so nice to get feedback about our work and to meet so many new shop owners and letterpress admirers.

NYIGF Day 2

You can see Day 2 of my gift show coverage over at Poppytalk.

NYIGF Day 1

I'm contributing a few guest posts of the Gift Show over at Poppytalk. You can see Day 1 right here!

Booth No. 7500

I am so happy with our booth display for the Gift Show. Everything I had planned out in exhausting detail really came together when we set up the booth. I love how fresh the booth looks even with the gray paper. And the bunting and flowers totally help to soften things a bit more. I'm having a great time and meeting such wonderful people along the way, not to mention some pretty awesome shops will now be carrying our line!

It's coming together

Planning for the NY Gift Fair has been much easier in many ways than the stationery show because this time I have some idea what to expect. But it's also very different since this time I have my own booth. It's amazing to see that I can fill an entire booth on my own and could probably still use more space! Here's a few set up shots of the booth. Can't believe it starts tomorrow. We're in booth #7500 if you're planning to stop by the show!

ps-I didn't get a haircut, my personal assistant (actually, a gracious former intern) is helping us hang bunting in the booth.

Many trips to the thrift store

Ok, so yesterday I talked about my day off. Today I figured I would show you some of my recent finds.  I've been making tons of trips to our local thrift stores to find the perfect display pieces for the gift show. One of my favorites is ReHouse, where I found some awesome old wooden boxes for my catalogs. My other favorite spot is a little hole in the wall Salvation Army that has a great supply of milk glass. The top pics were taken at ReHouse and the bottom were taken on my dining room table. I'll be lugging a few dozen pieces of milk glass to the show, which will fill a pretty awesome collection of repurposed furniture - some from flea markets and some from my over-crowded attic. I'm really starting to get excited about the show!

A day off

This weekend marked Jake's 30th birthday. It was pretty low key, but it also meant that it was one of my first days off in what feels like a long time. It's weird, when you own your own business, you work every day. It may not be the entire day, but work is certainly never far from my mind (like when I was glued to my laptop working on a deadline even though we were at a cottage on a beautiful lake). Even on the weekends, it's impossible for me not to check my email and then likely that I will get sucked into a long response or remember that I need to finish a proof for a client. Well, Saturday I made it a point to not do most of these things and just spent the day at the market, going to dinner, and then staying up late talking with friends we barely get to see. It was such a nice night.

We've also been making an effort to cook more. Before Jake got laid off I had been making a bad habit of eating out a lot. Way too much. It was easier and it was less stressful and it meant I could just veg out and not think about anything. Which is so sad because I love to cook. So now that Jake is around during normal dinner hours, we have started making meals together. It's amazing that cooking together can be so satisfying. Even the easy meals come together so much quicker. The pics in this post are from some of our recent meals...yogurt parfaits with fresh berries and peaches...sweet yellow tomoatoes waiting to become roasted tomato soup...summer salad with beets and clementines.

A photo and a link: Jeff Nishinaka

Really amazing paper installations. I would love to see one of these in person. To see more, check out his website!

images from Jeff Nishinaka

Le Train Bleu

With the gift show looming, I've been spending tons of time in the studio lately. And every now and then I take a mini-break to daydream about what I might wear to the show. Actually, I'm really thinking about what I would wear on a daily basis if I weren't printing in a 90-degree studio and my nails weren't coated in rubber-based ink.  Le Train Bleu totally fits the bill - stylish, vintage-y, and feminine. They're even having a sale right now...which is quite tempting!

A photo and a link: Kimberly Hennessy

Kim Hennessy's work is completely awesome. Period.

Thanks to Abbey for the heads up.

At long last!

I'm so excited to finally announce two brand new Pistachio Press wedding collections! The first is the Finer Things Collection. Designed by Michelle Chasse, this intimate collection offers stunningly intricate designs inspired by textiles, teas, and sweets: some of the finer things in life!

And the second collection is the Calligraphy Collection. Yep, you read that correctly - custom calligraphy can now be yours! Pistachio Press and Grace Edmands have teamed up to develop an elegant line of calligraphed invitations. Choose from several distinct hand lettered styles to be impeccably letterpress printed.

I can't tell you how amazing it feels to launch both of these new collections and to have worked with such talented women. To celebrate, I'm offering a 20% discount on all invitation orders placed by September 30th. No need to have them printed by the cut-off date, we just need to have a contract in the works! The discount applies to all collections, even the custom calligraphy line.

Eric Yerke

I came across Eric Yerke's beautiful photographs while reading about a DIY wedding last week. His photos are really stunning and I particularly love the way he captures little things from a distance.