i think i just finalized the design for the 2011 desk calendar. no. i mean finalized the concept. which i didn't expect to do tonight but hey! good news!
will share when i'm ready. (this is a lesson in patience, my friends. paaaaaaaaaatience.) and yes, the box worked. i hope it also works for you.
i'm currently working on developing a recurring column for scoutie girl about eco-friendly art and design (more on that soon). as part of that, and perhaps even more so in my own work right now, i'm thinking a lot about creativity and constraint.
case in point: last year's illustrated desk calendars.
they are probably still one of my favorite up up creative products ever. something about them just made me so happy - the colors, the paper, the wide-format case, the hand-illustrated patterns.
but i can't help but feel like right now, they're kind of pathetic in terms of their eco superpowers. so for 2011, i am placing some new constraints on myself. i want to create desk calendars that are as lovely, but that are eco-friendlier. last year's used recycled paper, as do all of my things. but for 2011 i'm trying to experiment with various display options, paper sizes, arrangements, etc. i'm limiting my resources with the hope that in the end, i'm going to come up with something not just artistic but truly creative.
as i lay on my attic floor this afternoon brainstorming calendar possibilities and playing and all, i doodled myself a little reminder. and then i decided to turn it into desktop wallpaper. and then i decided to share it with you. i hope you enjoy it.
download it here. save the jpg file and set it as your desktop background. voila!
(p.s. i've decided to make these wallpapers a monthly thing. we're going to count this as august 2010's since i'm going to be "away" this weekend celebrating my fifth wedding anniversary (we're not actually going away, but we're getting kid-free time and celebrating nonetheless). come back at the beginning of september for the next installment.)
[ mini goals clockboard by marykatemcdevitt ]
i love love love babysitter days. in fact, i love everyday more just for having some babysitter days. i love being with my kids more. i love having a little bit more family time on the weekends. i love that this week, i got to make zucchini bread because i didn't have to work every free second of the day.
i also love my work more. i feel so much more on top of things, and mostly i feel like i can actually take a minute to come up with some kind of a plan. to set some goals.
that's what i'm doing this afternoon while my kids soak up all the babysitter-y goodness (they both love her, which helps a TON). while 90 postcard-style wedding invitations print in the background, and my new friend mozy automatically backs up my very important files, i'm going to do me a little business planning.
i know. it's a bit of a miracle.
now, i don't mean to give the impression that i don't have a lot of stuff. i do. i have more stuff than i need, more than i want, and more than i have room or time for.
what i don't have is any emotional attachment to most stuff. i'm not a person who needs to save something just for the sake of having loved it once. or it having been given to me by someone i haven't seen in ten years. i prefer to save (i.e. store in the basement) things for just three reasons:
1 - i honestly think i will use it again in the somewhat near future
2 - it is an expensive or cumbersome object that i think there's a chance (even a small one) i will use again someday, and replacing it will cost far more than the effort/stress/space it costs me to save it (i.e. spendy camping equipment, baby clothes, etc.)
3 - i consider it a small way to provide my kids with some insight into who their mother is. (emphatic emphasis on the word small - i flat out refuse to just save stuff because one day my kids may go through it. i try to keep all my "whoa, look what mom used to do/have/be" items to two large rubbermaid containers, no more.)
i'm having a little trouble deciding about two things, though: my box filled with newspaper clippings (from 7 years spent writing for and editing newspapers and magazines), and my dissertation boxes.
neither meets the above criteria. i will not use these items in the future. they are not small. if i lost them in a fire i wouldn't even be particularly sad. which means i should let them go. but i'm feeling very attached to them. both are very physical reminders of parts of my identity -- and in fact significant chunks of my life -- that i consider sort of gone now. they're parts of me that i'm not anymore. parts of me that i gave very serious consideration to, that i spent long periods of time thinking would possibly become the things that defined me, in a way.
at the same time, though, even as i'm feeling attached, i'm also feeling a very strong urge to just get them out of my house. stop filling up space we don't have with things i will probably never even look at.
i can't decide how best to honor the first urge while fulfilling the second. what do you think?
the first of the address labels are back in the shop now. i have five of the original designs available plus the new ones shown above, which i designed for us when we sent out emily's birth announcements and all of our christmas thank you notes several months late.
you could have yours say "thanks so much" or "wish you were here" or whatever other cleverness you can think up.
the other label designs and sizes will be coming in the next two weeks.
[ photo credit at end of post. so i can explain. click on the image to go to the source.]
dude, there is just something about me and summer. june, july, and august. i want to like them, i do all my very best pretending to like them. but something happens in summer that just turns my insides to bumblebees and my thoughts to fears.
the first summer it happened was two summers ago. postpartum holy-crap-anxiety and depression, they said.
then last summer when it happened again, i was pregnant. same hormones, different timing in relation to the expulsion of baby from body.
and this summer i suppose it could always be chalked up to having just had a baby. but at this point, i'm pointing all ten fingers agitatedly at summer, which sucks because i'd much rather blame the postpartum hormones. there will be a time in my life when i am not aswim in just-had-a-baby, but there will never be a time in my life when there is no summer.
or at least for all our sakes i hope that's true.
it's annoying and stupid and complicated. it's like the trauma of two total breakdowns (the first was worse than the second, but not by much i wouldn't say) has now become one of the factors creating my anxiety.
i'm anxious about being anxious? or no! about having been anxious.
over the last two years i've definitely learned some tricks. i know how to sit with my anxiety better. how not to let it snowball. how to wait for it to pass the way you might wait for a marching band to pass in the parade. hell, i've learned to know it's anxiety i'm feeling and not something else. that's a pretty big deal.
i still feel like it is acutely related to my children even as it has absolutely nothing to do with them. perhaps what i mean to say is that it is acutely related to parenting although not at all because of my kids. there's just something about parenting that makes avoiding fears impossible. something about it that forces you to learn to sit with things that are uncomfortable, even as doing so can sometimes make you all the more uncomfortable.
oh who knows what it is. all i know is i never used to have this relationship with summer, and now i do, and even though i wouldn't want to go back, i would very much like to move on.
[ the photo is by alicia bock, and it's for sale in her etsy shop. it's called "the last days of summer" which is why i chose it. think of it as my little dash of optimism in a sort of crisis-ridden post. and enjoy, because it's also quite pretty, eh? ]
i think part of why my business has been successful thus far, and why i feel so confident that it will continue to grow, is that in addition to loving the creative part, i really love the business part. i like figuring out pricing and sourcing new supplies (except when it takes forever and i can't find what i know already does exist out there if only i could figure out where); i like doing the marketing thing (although this is the one thing i never have enough time for - you could spend 26 hours a day working on marketing).
and yet that stuff does always feel like a hassle. i spent the afternoon -- three hours of precious babysitter time -- meeting with my accountant (my first time!) and opening a business account (finally) and doing things like that. the whole time all i could think was, "i could be working!" because even though the business-y stuff is enjoyable (i felt so grown up talking with my accountant, so grown up and so professional, despite that i was wearing flip flops from old navy (channeling my inner richard branson (and yes, i almost wrote charles bronson)), pretending i own my own island and heck yeah i wear flip flops to the accountant's office)), it still feels like this extra thing that i have to do but that really just eats up my precious time that could be spent doing something that people can and will see.
and i think i may have just been entered in a "longest sentence ever" contest in the nested parentheses category.
it's audience participation time once again here at up up, the blog. i'm about to finalize my order with the label paper people (i'm having custom sizes made just for me to print on!) and before i pay for customization and all that, i wanted to gauge interest in various sizes.
the two wider ones are to wrap around the edge of the envelope, the square label is for shipping labels and the little one's for return address labels. whaddawe think?
please try to focus on the sizes and arrangements and not on the designs themselves, as i just threw these together quickly to get your input. danke.
i know i mentioned that i found an intern, and perhaps i mentioned that i love her already, but i wanted to take a minute to introduce her to you because she's a part of this little enterprise now and in a way you all are, too, and i want you all to be friends.
the image above is from sarah spencer's student page at FSU where she is a graphic design major looking to obtain a BFA in design. the caption from her portfolio simply says "a personal mantra," so of course you can tell why i like her, right? (in fact, if it's okay with her, i'll be printing it out and putting it on the bulletin board that's about 14 inches from my computer -- can i? can i, sarah?)
what's even better is that sarah totally takes this mantra to heart. i wasn't advertising the internship at FSU. on the blog i had mentioned looking for a local intern, but hadn't said anything about any remote internship possibilities. but sarah came knocking, and her interest was so sincere and her desire to learn so strong that i just had to take her on, 1200-mile commute be damned.
to start out, sarah's helping me work on my press / wholesale kit. i'm going to have her tell you about our progress sometime in a few weeks (my first guest writer here on the blog!). until then i'll just leave you with a little bit more about her, straight from the horse's mouth, as they say:
I love love love to draw and paint, mostly digitally but I'm getting into oils now. My illustrative work is mostly based on faces and the human form, and my design work tends to be really grid-heavy, colorful, typographic stuff. I'm really looking for a way to marry the two, which is why I love Up Up. Your simple bright illustrations just plain make me happy. (And calm my brain down. A lot.) I sing and write songs too, play the piano. I love Star Wars, video games, cheesy fantasy novels about dragons and princesses and other such geekery. Working on organizing a blog right now with pics of my work and similar silliness, so I'll send you the link when it's ready.
the boy? he's three.
THREE.
and three? it's complicated. it asks interesting questions and its brain can hold multiple ideas in it at once. it is ever more logical, and at the same time ever more emotional. it knows about and experiments with affect (the other day when three was in his room and mommy was in 6-months's room, three did this weird grunty whiny frustrated thing and then informed mommy, instead of asking for you i did another thing to get you to help me - god help us all). it declares its independence in one sentence (hey! now that i'm three, there are three grownups and one baby!, three informs me) and tears up when someone suggests that there will ever come a time when he will not live with mommy and daddy (he may know more than we realize about this). three is social and anti-social; three is purposefully funny and purposefully annoying. it is also inadvertently both of those.
if the gifts three received for its birthday are any indication (tent and sleeping bag, slip & slide, stomp rocket, giant floor puzzle, kid-proof digital camera and more), three is going to be a fun and a full year.
it occurred to me yesterday that it's possible that this year, up up creative could gross an amount that someone out there probably makes as a salary, not that i envy that person at all because it's certainly not a livable wage. and we won't even talk about how much of that gross total will be or already has been reinvested in the company (read: how much i've already spent and will continue to spend on supplies, tools, advertising, etc.). but yeah. this year my company could gross somewhere in the low five-figure range (whee!).
and then when i was thinking about that yesterday i ended up having myself a good laugh because holy crap i would not work this hard for anyone else offering to pay me so very freaking LITTLE. i'm sorry but if the words "packing and shipping" were uttered, you can believe i'd be passing on the job. or if someone told me i'd be working from 8-11 each night and all day on the weekends? i'd walk on out the door. or that the aforementioned shipping would usually be done while also attending to two small kids? no way.
it's really funny the things we'll do for our own businesses that we wouldn't dream of doing for someone else's, eh?
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