:: the things i wish i could outsource ::

there was a time, right after evan was born and lasting, i dunno, a year or more, that i wrote here every day. it went like this: get up, feed the baby, eventually eat something and get dressed and brush my teeth, do the day, whatever the day was to be that day, do dinner for the baby, eat with brian, kid bed, BLOG. and then after blog, or sometimes before, or during, FLICKR.

it was just part of the day.

now i feel like my days are so overrun with everything else the blog is reserved for whenever-i-can-find-the-damned-time. (and flickr? i'm not sure i've used it once since i uploaded the pictures from NSS last may).

and no, whenever-i-can-find-the-damned-time does not include now.

but i've been working so hard on bringing you (and the world!) aper + pink that i forgot to tell you along the way what it's like bringing a new business into the world when it's, like, a planned-in-advance business.

up up creative happened and grew and became. it was an unplanned but very much wanted pregnancy and it has grown to be a very pleasant child.

aper + pink was 100% planned, and while the execution (gestation?) has been purposefully condensed into a short, short period of time, it has at times felt like this overwhelming beast. not the business idea, but everything that goes into making a business idea happen at a certain time and on purpose.

there has been ordering, or i suppose i would be telling a truer truth if i were to say there has been 90% order planning (and unplanning, and replanning, and second-guessing, and third-guessing, and then back to the second guess, no maybe the first) and 10% actual ordering.

there has been physical organization and orientation.

there has been a lot of really awesome pre-launch marketing -- getting out there and talking to the people who i want to be my customers -- which has also served as pre-launch survey-taking and focus group polling.

but holy hell there's so much thinking that goes into this, and i don't mean the angsty "what on earth am i doing with my business" kind of thinking that i've gone through at regular intervals with up up creative. this thinking is more like, "okay. i have a plan. in my mind it is as clear as day. how do i get it across to other people in a way that makes it as crystal clear and fantastic?"

i'm a decent communicator. a decent teacher. i can usually take a large pile of information and carefully, skillfully, condense it into its finest, most digestible self. but taking the fine, digestible idea and building all the necessary scaffolding to hold it up to the sun? 

i've tried three separate times now, or i guess four, to outsource the design and development of the website for aper + pink. i've also developed three almost-complete e-commerce websites. and each time i've changed course, or made the plea to others for help with the coding work, or the design, i've not seen that the real issue is this: i'm having trouble wrapping my head around all the content, and instead of sitting down with that i've been trying to throw Function and Pretty at it. 

oh that i could pay someone to climb inside my head and grab all the bits and bobbles related to aper + pink and then put them through some kind of strainer and turn them into the actual stuff of the business. 

which is to say: i'm going to have to take the next few days to climb inside my head and gather bits and bobbles and spend the time it will take to actually mold them into the business. i was really hoping i could avoid that part by hiring out the website work.

i guess i may do it all myself after all, since the very hardest part is on me.

damn damn damn.

:: on limits and e-commerce ::

i've spent a good portion of all available free time over the last three weeks -- which admittedly, with the holidays and moving into the new studio and all, hasn't been much free time -- working on the e-commerce site for the new print shop.

any of you who has spent any time setting up, comparing, designing, or implementing an e-commerce site feels my pain, i'm sure.

and all that pain has been tripled as i've simultaneously developed three different carts at the same time, pitting each against the others in a battle of design accessibility, pure e-commerce power, technical support, customer service, and ease of use.

i've run the up up creative e-comm site on, i realized recently, four different e-commerce platforms over the span of not-quite-two-years and i've extensively tested an additional three platforms.

each has its strengths and weaknesses. each drew me in for one reason and drove me away for another.

just a few days ago i got a very kind email from someone who had been visiting my up up creative e-comm website for inspiration as she looks to build her own stationery biz site in the coming months. she cited mine as being very user friendly, i think. i get weekly emails asking who designed it. so i like to think that it's a decent site.

but i'm here to tell you: i often consider nixing the e-commerce functionality on that site.

i'm sitting here on a sunday night wondering why i'm spending so much time developing an e-commerce presence for aper and pink (the new print shop, for any uninitiated folks out there in readerland).

there are a few reasons why, but chief among them are these:

1 - the custom design and print-shop work i do is complicated. people have questions. they have special requests, want special sizes, want to combine and uncombine and recombine things. they think their project is different, somehow, than what they're seeing on the page in front of them, and often they're right: it is different. having a functional e-commerce site tends, in my experience, to make people see limitations as brick walls. if only five sizes are listed for sale on an e-commerce website, it's easy to assume that those are the only five sizes available.

2 - i do not see myself in the goods business as much as i see myself in the service business. sure, my customers and clients walk away with tangible (and sometimes intangible) goods, but the value that they get from coming to me rather than going to someone else is that i provide a service. i make their lives easier, or i accomplish something they didn't think could be accomplished. i think e-commerce sites work very well for goods-based businesses but do not apply quite so neatly to businesses like mine when part of the lure is that you can get something made just for you.

3 - i am equally ignited in my work by two things: the things i create and the people i create them for. i like working with and speaking to those people at least somewhat directly (if digitally over email, much of the time). e-commerce sites, when they work properly, they make it so that the buyer and the seller needn't interact. this is the thing that's perhaps got me the most hung up. i don't like not interacting.

4 - i do pretty alright, sales-wise. my business continues to grow. but here's a little secret: the percentage of my income that comes from sales through upupcreative.com is, well, insignificant would be too harsh a word, but it's close. most of my sales come from emails, phone calls, or convos on etsy. they come from someone asking me a question and me answering it. and i kind of think that's the way it should be.

of course i insist on doing much of my shopping online. i don't like pushy sales people. i don't even like pushy sales emails. i am turned off by sales, discounts, and promotions. i know what i like, what i want, and what i need and i don't need anybody trying to convince me of anything. but if i'm looking to buy something complicated, or special, or whatever, i prefer for there to be a person on the other end of things.

and on the other hand…

nothing makes me crazier than a lame website. i like knowing enough to be able to create kick-ass websites for my businesses that do what they need to do and do it well. i've (gasp!) enjoyed working through the development of these three side-by-side comparison demos of the new aperandpink.com shop because it's rewarding making the technology bend to my will and do it prettily.

i just wonder if it's worth my time when it may actually work at cross purposes to my businesses' objectives. sure, e-commerce sites may save me time processing orders and sending and chasing after invoices, but they do not help me build, for example, a safe haven for graphic designers who want high-quality, kick-ass print services they can't get elsewhere. they don't help me convince my wedding and print customers that the sky's the limit. instead, they suggest quite the opposite: that there's a very specific set of parameters defining what's possible.

i realize it's crazy, but i'm considering heading off in a new direction with my websites. i'm considering turning away from e-commerce and towards gallery- and info-based sites. it's very 2004, i know. give potential customers as much as i can in terms of inspiration and information (pricing, ideas, etc.) but then let them come to me when it comes time to order, which is what many of them do now anyway.

what do you think?

:: kick-ass short-run fine-art printing heading your way ::

richard branson, i learned today, started his airline because when he was in the music biz he hated flying on other people's airlines and he thought to himself, "i can do it better." and then he did it.

yes, i'm comparing myself to richard branson, because we're totally analogous. in this one case.

so, here's the basic deal...

as you probably very well know by now if you're a reader of thishereblog, i've been running a design studio / print shop / online retail establishment for more than three years now, and every six months or so I go through the old "should I or shouldn't I outsource" debate. 

to date, other than my wrapping paper which i had offset printed here in rochester, i've kept all printing in-house, but not for lack of trying (at times) to outsource.

at one point quite recently, after the 33 weddings that came of the september experiment, i decided something needed to give. so i went out into the "street" and asked every short-run-type graphic designer i could think of (and read every related post on every related forum) and i came up with a list of seven or eight printers to try.

cut to mad spree of account setting up and sample ordering.

then cut to me getting the samples and being un.happy.

then cut to me being frustrated and wondering why there isn't someone out there who will print my orders on MY printers with MY inks and cut them on manual cutters in small batches, paying close attention to things like making sure things are centered and even and that, you know, crop marks aren't showing (one of the top-recommended print shops actually sent me my order with crop marks visible on almost 20% of the order they were cut that irregularly) and generally doing things the way i insist on doing them. (as i've said before, like it or not, i care deeply about quality and paper and the art of printing.)

cut to me waking up on a sunday morning with an epiphany: i am in a perfect position to be the printer i am always looking for. i've made the contacts, i've got bulk accounts with major paper distributors who ship to me straight from the mill at a crazy discount if i order thousands of dollars' worth at a time and can do it on their production schedule. i've got equipment and lots of practice being a perfectionist about printing.

and so. so so so.

i will be opening a short-run print shop. actually, it will be a

fine-art

short-run

indie-powered

designer-loving

eco-friendly

in-house

kick-ass

anything-but-basic

print shop equipped with everything you need to wow your clients and amaze your friends.

i'll be featuring vibrant, water-resistant pigment inks and all the best cotton, recycled, and bamboo paper you can imagine. oh, and want something a bit more exotic? how about sugar cane? kenaf? or perhaps some self-adhesive kraft paper? done.

the thing is, for most people, printing is the un-fun part. it's the tedious, error-ridden part. it's the part that brings swear words to their lips and tears to their eyes. it incites arguments between otherwise happily engaged couples just trying to keep invitations personal, practical, and affordable.

but I love it. i love learning the tricks and figuring out how to avoid the troubles. i like discovering new methods and new substrates.

i mean, i read blogs about printing. i really do.

the official launch will be in february 2012 at aperandpink.com but in the meantime, i'm always still print-print-printing along. i'm bringing on new customers now and hope to continue doing so as february approaches.

and now you finally know what i've been scheming. yay!

:: the first business trimester ::

it's four now, and i'm just sitting down to work, which on a sunday is pretty much unheard of. usually i toil my sundays away since i have no childcare on monday and only part of a day on tuesday. sundays are important days, work wise.

instead of working i spent 20 minutes on the elliptical and 5 hours sweeping and mopping my house from top to bottom. (note to self: if you are going to spend five hours sweeping and mopping, 20 minutes on the elliptical is kinda irrelevant.)

my work break has much less to do with needing to clean -- let's face it, i clean so seldom that there's basically always a need to do it -- and much more to do with needing to do some business thinking.

it's the same reason i've been absent here on the blog these last 19 days.

i'm thinking. planning. assessing. polling. synthesizing. crunching. fantasizing. gut-checking.

business is slow this month -- because i made it that way. i've taken off random saturdays to sit and stare at my husband, or my in-laws, spent sundays sliding furniture around in order to uncover bunny-sized dust bunnies. i've gone evenings (not many, mind you, maybe even just one) completely computer-free. i've taken long lunch breaks and walks around the block.

sales are way down, of course, but thanks to work i did all year for minted and snapfish, i'm reaping the rewards of the holiday season without much effort at all on my part.

i have my reasons for creating this slow, slow november.

i am at a point in the growth of my business and my family life where i need to figure out what the next few years are going to look like.

brian would like to have a bit more of me on the weekends and has suggested a few times that it might be time to think about a more full-time daycare situation for the kids. and i've also had a business epiphany that pushes the issue further. 

i have a really excellent business plan and i've crunched the numbers and done some market research and floated the idea by friends and colleagues and it's excitingly possible. doable. but to do it right, and it's the kind of thing that really has to be done right, it will require three things:

1. a significant investment - of somewhere around $10-16K - that it will take between 9 and 12 months to recuperate, which I realize isn't bad at all from a business investment standpoint.
2. a dedicated space (i.e. commercial or industrial studio space), which adds to the investment tally and extends the time until break-even.
3. an employee. which, yeah, adds to the investment tally and, right again, extends the time until break-even quite a bit more. this part of the equation also adds the potential for a lot more stress.

i'm not totally good with stress. my tissues seem to be stress sponges, sucking up all the cortisol and adrenaline and other yuckiness and turning them into raw, pulsating panic that strikes when least expected, sometimes even waking me from a dead sleep. 

i am surprisingly okay with issue number one, the investment, but the second two are too big for me to take lightly. they're major. crazy major. to make those two things (a studio, an employee) work with my life, i'd definitely have to up the week-day daycare and in order to compensate, work less on the weekends. i'd be signing myself up for a full-time day job working for myself and being someone's boss.

let me tell you, it doesn't feel great knowing that i have this viable business idea that has the potential to really be wildly successful and that all i need to do to make it happen is commit to it fullheartedly and step up and take the reins and yet i'm sitting here writing a long thinky blog post about it.

it also doesn't feel great knowing that my hesitation is a very female hesitation. something tells me that a man in my position would already have been down to the SBA talking about loans, would have scoped out studio space, would have talked to the woman at daycare about extending the kids' hours, and would be spreading the word about the impending new hire. that i'm not doing those things makes me feel a bit wimpy.

brian is already telling people - you know, family members and such - about my new business plan, which makes me cringe a little bit. or not cringe. wince. like it hurts to talk about it. and hurt i guess it does, because i know he's right that i could easily be racing forward into the wild blue future. 

but there are things i just can't ignore. i can't ignore the fact that i'm a total introvert who isn't exactly jumping up and down at the thought of working day-in and day-out with the same human being, having to communicate each day with that person. having to advise, guide, teach, correct, and listen to carefully enough to make the business - and the working relationship - work.

and i can't ignore the fact that emily is only two and i still want a little bit more time with her. she's at that age where we are starting to be buddies, and i really do not like the idea that i got to share the early buddy years with evan but might choose not to spend them with emily. it's a decidedly motherly thing to worry about, that i won't know my daughter as well as i will know my son, but it's there and its un-ignorable.

so here i sit, feeling so much like a mother in her first trimester who is nervous and excited and bewildered, who doesn't want to tell anyone about the baby yet - just in case. here i sit with a kick-ass plan for a really kick-ass business, one that would be both a new direction for me and a really logical extension of everything i've been doing since november 2, 2008 when all of this started.

if i don't move forward with the plan, i know i'll mourn the loss. i don't know that i can go as far as to compare it to a miscarriage or an abortion, since i've never experienced those, but there will definitely be pain and mourning and the sense that something amazing didn't happen. but while that sounds to some like a reason in and of itself to move forward -- take the plunge in order to avoid the mourning, the pain, the loss, the regret -- to me it's not so clear. avoiding that sense of loss isn't enough to make me ignore the fact that i'm not sure i want the life that bringing this new business to fruition would bestow upon me. the life for me, and for my family.

it's all so damned complicated.

there are some things that i am pretty sure of. 

1. i like working. i wouldn't trade in my job for staying home full time in a million years. i LOVE my kids and i LOVE that we have mondays all to ourselves to just do kid-and-mom-type things. out and about in the old things and here at home things. but i do actually hope to even out my life a bit more over the next few years so that i can do more of my work during "normal" work hours and less at night and on weekends.
2. i like that my job is flexible.
3. if anything, over the years i've wished it would be even a little bit easier for me to take breaks, deal with illnesses, etc.

beyond those things, i think i need to do some more house-cleaning, by which i mean soul-searching. i hope you'll indulge my silence about the specifics of the business while i do so.

and um, yeah, please do stop by my shop, as well as minted and/or snapfish, if you're so inclined this month. you'll be contributing directly to my ability to take the time to figure shit out.

please and thank you good night.

:: today ::

printing.
planning.
psyched.

:: as drawn in and through me ::

i drew this up quickly this morning, in a mad rush of gotta-get-this-down, and i'll grant that it's a bit hard to read and that the photo (iphone) is a bit blurred and dark, but i had to share it. it's my lightbulb-moment flash-of-genius understanding of my business. as drawn in and through me. click to see the image larger.

it's september, which for the eternal student here means it's time for reflecting on where i've been and where i'm going. and usually i sort of keep the reflection to the recent past -- no more than the last year -- but today i'm extra thinky about the further-back past.

this past year has been such a weird one. it was just about exactly this time last year that i found out i was going to be featured in brides magazine, and in the time since then i've done all kinds of stuff with an eye towards building my business.

i don't use a lot of capitals around here, not really sure why other than honest-to-god aesthetics, but that really ought to be capital-b building my capital-b-business, or at least that's how it has felt.

as i've suggested a bunch lately, it has felt a little bit wrong, the building.

and as a result of the wrong-feelingness, the growth of the biz has actually slowed.

which has me thinking about the beginning. the first decision to start up up creative, the first impulses that drove me, the first things i did, the first time i got awesome feedback, the first time i put something out into the word that i really loved and was excited to share.

here are the things i sold on my first day open for business. november 2, 2008.

and i was so so so beyond so excited. and now here i am. still creating other things that just make me want to put them out into the world. to get them into someone else's hands and then to hear their giddy exclamations.

that's the part i live for. it's the center of my business and the center of me.

for a creative biz with a name that isn't the artist's name (i.e. this business is called up up creative, not julie green), i'm discovering that this is a business that works best when i am true to the me-ness of it. when i make decisions driven by my gut. when i create things that make me feel so good and then i pass that good-feeling thing along to someone else to feel good.

i've spent a lot of time trying to come up with a manifesto of sorts. i've been craving a manifesto, actually, which is a big part of what drove the great name-your-price experiment (which is going well, by the way. go check it out). i've been trying to think about what i believe and what my business's core principles are.

and i always get stuck. i easily come up with my own core principles, but i always struggle to come up with my business's core principles.

because right? doesn't it seem like they're not really supposed to be the same? or at least that the business ones shouldn't be so, i don't know, personal?

but i don't know how to come up with principles that don't start from inside my own gut. all i really know is that i started this thing because i needed to make things and i needed those things to make me feel awesome and i needed them to make other people feel awesome. and sometimes i feel like doing one thing and sometimes i feel like doing something else. i am changeable. i like to try new things. i sold a quilt and two necklaces and a calendar on my first day in business forgodssake. i like to challenge the status quo and break the rules. i like to do things my way. if something isn't making me downright-dreadfully-happy (and here dreadfully is a good thing, i believe), i don't want to do it anymore.

which is kind of a weird way to run a business.

but so what. it's how i run mine. and business plans and industry conventions and shoulds be damned, it's how i'm going to keep running it.

so whaddaya think about that? (no, really. tell me. leave comments. email me. sky write a message. i want to hear from you today, please.)

:: what i did on my summer vacation, by julie green ::

wow. that sucked.

a couple of weeks ago my website started acting funny, as in i did a routine update and it DISAFUCKINGPEARED. and i stayed up late into the night getting it to reappear. whew. but then i started noticing that for the 79 days since the previous routine update, which occurred about two weeks before i went to new york for NSS, my website, which is an ecommerce website more or less (no -- just more) intended to allow people to buy things from me, was not allowing people to buy things from me. like at all.

i'm embarrassed it took me so long to figure this out, but it did. enough orders slipped through the cracks of my mostly broken checkout that i sort of just thought maybe it was a slow summer kinda thing. and most wedding people just order via email anyway so i was still doing wedding stuff. and then there was that whole recovering from NSS thing.

anyway, i spent the last two weeks moving everything over to a new platform. and moving it sucked. but now it's done.

if you go check it out, you can also see what i landed on logo-wise, thanks to much input from you-my-lovely-readers-and-friends.

:: logo re-work ::

after the NSS, you may or may not remember, i was feeling a little existential angst. to quote myself,

i identify so much more with the artists and artisans than i do with anyone else in my industry. every time a buyer admired the color and quality of one of my cards or posters and asked me whether they were letterpress printed or screenprinted and i told them they were printed digitally (in my studio, i sometimes added, though i knew that this sounded small-fry instead of artisanal), the part of me that knew what that sounded like to them just wanted to cringe. and then run out and buy a press or some screens and lend my work the credibility it apparently needs. that i apparently need. i have a very "i made this with my own two hands" ethic to my business but i think i'm always just the smallest bit plagued by the fact that ultimately, everything i make comes from my printer. i really noticed this at the show more than i ever have elsewhere. it's hard to highlight what i feel is a key element to what makes up up creative unique -- the fact that everything (except for the wrapping paper) really is printed in house much like a letterpress shop or a screenprinting shop -- when to most people digital printing is basically at the bottom of the printer's foodchain, even below offset. this is something i think i'm going to have to deal with one way or another during the next year, managing my own perceptions and managing others' perceptions.

my first step in ameliorating the angst has been just a very minor shift in how i describe my business. while "eco-friendly and 100% sap-free" is a very apt tag line for my business, it's not helping me convey the things i'd most like to convey about my business. it doesn't really explain what i do.

"design & print studio," on the other hand, seems to situate me a little bit better among the hordes of screaming stationers out there. it puts it out there that i'm an indie shop (just a little "studio" - doing design & print work); and i like how the word "studio" connotes something a but more artisanal.

to go with the new tagline, i've worked up a few new logo possibilitles. i'm striving for something that represents how i see my design work: clean, crisp, minimalist, and modern but with a certain quiet beauty, maybe a little play between masculine and feminine. i'm also striving to show off some pretty typefaces since fonts are a big part of what i do.

i'm eager for your feedback. what do you think of these 6 logo prototypes? leave me your:

(a) critiques
(b) praise
(c) favorites
(d) suggestions

please and thank you.

:: so much afoot ::

man oh man. there's so much going on around here and it's driving me crazy that i haven't had a chance to share it with you all. like did you know i now have wrapping paper? it'll be for sale in my shop sometime in mid-may. and i have my 2012 desk calendar finalized, with a super-cool made-for-me exclusive calendar stand? it's very cool. and OH FREAKING YEAH. DID I MENTION THAT UP UP CREATIVE WILL SOON BE OFFERING LETTERPRESS PRINTING ON ALL WEDDING SUITES? i've partnered with amy rau of greengirlpress.com to make that happen, and i'm so flipping excited about it.

more on all of this in the coming weeks. i just had to pop by quickly to share. HOORAY!

- julie

:: progress ::

i give you: the sneakiest of sneak peeks at what i've finally settled on for the trade show booth. i've accepted the fabric walls now* and i've gotten over my need to seekseekseek until i find fabric-walled booth-nirvana.

if you want to get a little idea of what i'm cooking up think white, wood, and tangerine. think modern and clean. think fun and a little bit surprising. think bold.

it seems awfully silly now that i'm sitting here on the other side of deciding what to do for the booth, but what it really came down to for me was thinking about my products. i did one of these "quick: name ten words you think of when you think of up up creative" deals and those words that came up are the words i used to finally land on booth-related design decisions.

it's the advice i would have given anyone else who was having my trouble, but for some reason it was advice that was eluding me. funny how that happens.

*  i got some great public and private advice this week, prompted by my "i am still totally going crazy trying to figure out my trade show booth walls" post a few days ago, and while i appreciated all of it, the best (for me) was this: "I think the way that I would spin it to myself is that this is my first trade show and I will look back on this when my business is a mulit-million dollar juggernaut and smile." that was exactly what i needed: spin. plus it's an attitude i have all the time. brian and i are always talking about how these are the hard years and how we'll look back one day and remember it kind of fondly.

:: 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!

:: 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.)

:: winter wedding 2011: sneak peek! ::

it's not ready for prime time quite yet, but here's a little sneak peek at the 2011 winter wedding collection soon to be released in the up up shops. i was trying to add 12 designs to the 12 already there, and in fact designed more than 20 in the rough-draft stage, but i can't seem to weed out two of the fourteen pictured here. so maybe it'll be a plus-sized collection?

as usual, there's a bit of whimsy, a bit of snark, and a good, hearty helping of bold. there are a few julie green original illustrations (i'm quite proud of the orchids) and some other fun stuff throughout. can't wait to show off the whole thing in a few weeks.

whee!

:: 2011 desk calendar, now readier ::

the *brand new* style of calendar is still in development, but because i have 72 calendar cases left from a replacement order last year, i went ahead and put together a 2011 version of the bestselling cd-case desk calendar.

all new illustrated patterns. all new color palette. it's a very different palette for me - kind of sweet in a way my stuff's usually not sweet, but with a few surprising color choices just to keep things interesting.

here's just a tiny preview of all 12 patterns. it'll be in both shops this week. there'll only be 72 available and when they're gone, they're gone. i hope i remember to set one aside for me this year.

:: good news is in your indeterminate future ::

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.

:: your turn again ::

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.

:: pop quiz, hotshots ::

[ "yay!" by tanakawho on flickr-- see the creative commons license info here. ]

today is:

(a) my fifth wedding anniversary
(b) my son's third birthday
(c) the day of my big huge wedding collection release
(d) all of the above

yup. so much to do, so little time. just popping in to say hi and to tell you to go check the shops today (etsy here, up up creative here) to see all the wedding goodness (it's not all up yet, but it will be) and to let you know i'll be back here tomorrow with some birthday party pics.


(P.S. 40% off discount code good this weekend only to anyone who emails me directly (not in the comments, folks - you'll have to find the email link in the right sidebar - blogger won't let me link to it in the body of my post) by 11:59pm EST today (june 25th) with the name of the movie that inspired the title to today's post. i memorized the whole thing with my friend julie in high school and little snippets still surface in my daily life here and there, embarrassing as all that is to admit.)

:: get in on it, yo! ::

[ an invitation for the, um, temporal-order-ly challenged ]

hop on over to my flickr photostream to see all the fun wedding preview action going on there. i'm uploading over the next few days so go check out all the new, yummy goodness.

they'll be released in the shop on friday, my fifth wedding anniversary.

aww.

:: twinkly ::

[ bokeh - free texture, a photo by paloetic on flickr. see creative commons license info here and then download for free and use appropriately. ]

why no, that's not a completely random photograph. it's a photograph of lights. happy, sparkly lights.

i have a new intern (her name's sarah, she's in florida, i'm here in rochester. we're going to make it work a la tim gunn.) and i have a sitter who can work from monday at noon until she goes back to college in august.

fifteen glorious hours a week. except when she goes to new jersey to visit her boyfriend, like she's going to have more fun there than she would have with my excessively adorable offspring. those weeks it'll only be ten hours. ten glorious hours.

let me tell you, i'm happy. i'm happy to have the time to work. happy to have an intern to bounce ideas off of and to help me think creatively about some important things. happy that someone's going to play with evan while i work because he deserves to be played with while i work damnit. happy that we'll still have all kinds of mommy-kid time while i'll still get to develop this other thing that kind of makes me feel me-ish when mommying makes me feel not-me-ish.

yes yes yes i'm happy.

on some other day when i'm less sparkly and more introspective, remind me to tell you why searching for a nanny using a nanny agency is sort of like being on one of those reality shows where the endgame is marriage. sort of strange and surreal and constructed and with the added element of someone whose kind of up in your business. plus there's all this public judgment. and then at the end you're still somehow supposed to know, yes! this person is the one! i'm positive! here's my $1000 that says i'm positive.

no likey, here. no likey one bit.

:: more more more ::

so here we go. i think i'm starting to really like some of these. you? and what do you think about straight on versus taken at an angle? i have reasons of my own for preferring the angle, but they are not aesthetic reasons so i won't go into it and instead i'll poll you. do share.