:: coming soon to minted ::

i'm quite cheerfully here today to share some good news. not only was my "vintage treatment" design (shown here) chosen from among 600+ designs to be sold on minted, but it was one of the special editor's picks winners. you are, my friends, looking at the "best personalized calling card design."

i'm most pleased, i think, because i look at this and i look at designs i submitted to minted just a year ago and i see how much i've developed my own design voice in that time. i look at how much i've learned about pattern and texture and about using the tiniest of details to add almost unnoticeable elements that take a design from ho-hum to something more.

it's fun to be able to look back and see the development. and it's fun to win! yay!

:: hurtling planets and other issues (or, how to plan a gorgeous trade show booth on a budget and a conscience) ::

i have a total of three started-and-aborted blog posts about my trade show booth walls. they are, to say the least, stressing me out.

in planning my booth, my design aesthetic and my eco-commitment have collided in a two-planets-hurtling-through-space kind of way and i've found myself spinning and spinning as a result. what's more, my own personal definition of creativity has me bound and determined to find a way to salvage both planets, to coax them into a friendly peace - to swing them into a tight little orbit around my brand.

the point of impact is this:

in my industry, anyway, the booth is the brand. in fact, it's the brand and its the retail shop that will carry that brand. it's job is to invite buyers into a little world that makes them think of their own shops and think, "this is what is missing. this is what i have been searching for."

walls are a big part of this. they're a big part of how we display our products and a big part of creating that feeling that buyers are browsing their favorite corner paper store, not being herded through aisle after aisle, booth after booth.

and i think that hard walls always look better than fabric or paper ones. hard walls complete the illusion in a way that draped walls just don't. and more than that for me, hard walls contribute to the crisp, clean, minimalist up up creative design aesthetic.

but hard walls are a problem, ecologically speaking. because the gold standard for NSS hard walls is foam-core, and foam-core is more or less not reusable and it's certainly not recyclable. we're talking about 208 square feet of foam core board that is not recyclable and not reusable. and that's just for my booth, which is one in what, a thousand-plus? as someone on some blog i was reading earlier said, it's disposable, which really means it's garbage.

garbage that costs anywhere from $400 to (more typically) $1400 and provides you four whole days of beautiful-walled goodness.

fabric and paper are also options for the walls, but they also tend to look messier, less modern, and much more DIY (and not in that good DIY way). in all of my web-crawling travels i've yet to come across a fabric-walled booth that i thought was amazing.

i want to find a booth like that. i need to. because fabric is such a better option: it's reusable from year to year, it has a smaller footprint, it costs less. it's recyclable, in many cases, and even recycled in some.

fabric booths are, to me, ugly. they are not up up-y in the way that i need them to be for this trade show. but the part of me that believes that the best design comes from constraint also sees this as the ultimate design challenge. it is a problem to be solved, not avoided.

it's hard, though. because these aren't the only constraints. there are rules about what materials can be used at the trade show. rules about what we can carry in and what tools we can use to assemble our booths. and there are budgetary constraints. just reserving the space for this event costs in the thousands and while i could certainly create an ubercool ubereco booth on an unlimited budget, the budget's not just limited but pretty severely so.

and yet a decision has to be made. we're nearing march and it's time to order what needs to be ordered, construct what needs to be constructed. it's time to wrangle these planets into orbit before either one of them begins to implode.

what do you think? should i build birch walls? experiment with stiffened fabric? focus on free-standing shelves? should i order the foam core but find a way to recycle or reuse it after the event? help!

:: acceptance ::

in fifth grade, at band practice, one of the oboe players threw up. me being a flute player, and one of the ones sitting in the front row, i was terribly nearby. and i was horrified.

ever since i was shorter than a barstool i've been deer-in-headlights heart-racing scared of anything related to this one particular bodily function. even sitting here i'm having trouble typing all of this because just the words and the ideas related to emesis fill me with a dull thrumming panic.

at any rate, back in fifth grade, i somehow made it -- fear-faced and sweaty -- through band practice and the bus ride home and i promptly had a total tantrum at home in front of my parents. i refused to go back to band. i said i could never ever possibly go and threw in dramatic things like "if you make me go back i'll die."

my dad only got me to stop freaking out by telling me that if i didn't stop crying so hard, i myself would throw up.

silence. immediate, fear-based silence.

my parents' next course of action was to ask me if there was anything i could do to change what had happened earlier that day. could i turn back time and make it so that the oboe player didn't come to band that day? or didn't get sick?

of course not.

so i should stop thinking about it.

it was my first lesson in acceptance and change. it was my first paradigm-shifting glimpse at the alcoholic's favorite prayer - you know the one, about god granting serenity to accept things that can't be changed, strength to change things that can be, and wisdom to know the difference.

it wasn't told to me in quite that way, but it was as powerful for me as i imagine it is for the AA members who chant it in sync or whisper it in private. i would say that it has profoundly shaped my personality and my life.

it has made me a changer. it has helped me see that there are very few situations that i can't change. very few miseries i must simply accept.

parenthood was perhaps one of the first things that caused me angst and confusion and discomfort (and of course not only those things -- good things, too) that i couldn't simply change. i mean, i'd endured and accepted plenty of small things. short-term things. but parenthood was a whole different course of study for me, the eternal student of change.

and yet despite the lessons parenthood has taught me, i still consider myself to, well, more or less suck at acceptance. i'm so very good at change and so very impatient when it comes to acceptance. far easier to move on. far more satisfying to take action.

it was only this past week when something terrible happened to someone else in my life* that i realized i'm not so terrible at acceptance after all. when something really is out of my control, or even when i just know that trying to change it is only going to make things worse, or harder, or more painful for me or someone else, i am surprisingly able to step into acceptance like one steps into a lukewarm shower: i may not enjoy it, but i'm certainly able to do it.

it's a satisfying thing to know about myself. a peaceful thing. and while i wish this past week hadn't happened, or any of the things that led up to this past week, i am grateful for having learned this about myself. for the girl who fears she has fled too many discomforts too quickly, it's a very reassuring thing to know that she can sit and soak a bit in discomfort when she needs to.

* you, dear reader of this here blog, well know that i'm nothing if not right up front in your face with my own woes, struggles, and fears. however i try never to share anything that isn't mine. perhaps it's the writer in me, or the girl who once wanted to be a lawyer, but to me, other people's struggles deserve to be copyrighted; only their authors should reproduce them without permission. and so i shall remain vague. suffice it to say that i'm okay, and my kiddos and my husband. no need to worry about us.

:: hooray! up up's very own indie affiliate program ::

blogging friends,

remember when you started blogging and you signed up for an amazon affiliate account and thought, whee! now i'll link to amazon whenever i mention a book or an album or whatever, and soon i'll be rich!

well move over amazon because there's a new affiliate program in town. if you'd like to become an up up creative affiliate, meaning you will earn a commission on any sales you refer (either with your partner code, given out to people you know, or when people click on one of eleven available banners that you can link to on facebook or put on your website or blog, etc.), sign up for an account here.

it's a way for you to support a shop you love and help spread the word about up up creative and make a little spending money in the process.

there are two plans currently available: the standard affiliate plan gives you a 5% commission on all wedding sales you refer and 10% on everything else you refer; the feelgood plan gives you 15% on any of your feelgood list referred sales and 5% on everything else. your affiliate account is payable via Paypal when you reach a minimum of $15.

whee!

register as an up up creative affiliate now and get access to the banners, codes, etc.

:: up up creative for snapfish ::

the kiddos are at daycare today (yes! new situation! we're doing part-time daycare! and it's working out well!) and i've got lots on my plate, from wedding proofs for clients to emails that need to be answered to prepping a bit more for the national stationery show. but first among the projects is going to be working on some new designs for snapfish.

things there are going well. i've got some bestsellers and everything.

so i'm wondering: what would you like to see from up up creative for snapfish? any special requests? your wishes are my commands, my friends. you (yes you) can shape what goes up on snapfish.com. now that's power.

(curious what i've got there already? the image above shows the 16 designs currently for sale in both the UK and US shops. follow the links to get there yourself.)