produce!

the Big New Project this spring was the produce calendar. It was a request from my friend Gina, who wanted a calendar that let her know what was in season, and I took it one step further by including seasonal planting lists too. It required library trips, a close reading of the county agricultural extension website, and a lot of proofreading from friends and family. I finished the first round of calendars the *morning* of Renegade LA, and have since done a round of reprinting. I've also had several requests for bay area and northwest versions, so they are in the works (this one is for 'the Southland'--southern California). Each month has a linocut of a seasonal fruit or vegetable, and the calendar is perpetual, with space to keep notes by each date. I imagine it as a garden diary, to keep track of when you planted & harvested, but it could also be used as a birthday calendar...

big notebooks

for the larger wire-bound notebooks (5.5 x 7), I designed two different patterns, in a variety of color combos, some of which:

small notebooks

I started wire-binding blank books this year. The first 2 designs for small books (4.25 x 5.5), as modeled by Womack, were made from patterns of burrowing owls and Chantale's cloud drawings. I found some lovely heavyweight cardstock in lovely lovely colors and printed a variety pack of colors...

silver on pink:
silver on dark gray:

red on light gray:

silver on minty blue:

safety orange on white:

red on white:

and Chantale's clouds:

kitties

whilst in japan last summer, we went to a toy museum in an old rice storehouse. i took photos of everything, that is until a rather insistent retiree/volunteer made me put my camera away (i'd missed the no photos sign apparently). amongst my illegal stash of photos were a number of traditional stuffed animal toys, made by silkscreening a drawing of the animal onto fabric, sewing into the shape and stuffing. my favorite might have been the cat, who i have since paid tribute to in the form of a small blank greeting card:

magic ink bombe!

my friend dave is putting together a heroic project this year--he's asking 365 different artists to do a drawing on a specific day and submit it to him for inclusion in a perpetual daybook. i had one of the early days, jan 4, and set about painting a couple of my favorite packages from our 2008 trip to japan. dave chose the bombe, but i'm partial to the ink...

eaves

I've been holding on to this image for a long time, so long that I don't remember where I found it, to give the source proper credit.

I finally translated the image into a project, by using the floral eave pattern (I feel like my Nana had a similar pattern on her kitchen cabinetry, but then again my memory tends to exaggerate...) as a border on sets of flat cards and labels.

seafoam on white:

and silver on pale yellow:

i like lists

when i'm getting ready for a fair, or similar deadline, i start filling notebooks with list after list after list as a way of keeping my swimming brain sane. but then i look back at the dense notebooks and can't help but wonder if i was actually _in_sane. here are a couple of the more legible lists, one as i am getting started:


and then a bit later as things start to cook/unravel:

bird prints

I printed a selection of the odd birds from the calendar, as limited edition prints on archival stock--the calendars come and go and I thought this was a nice way of being able to frame the birds individually beyond the calendar year...

more patterns

I'm clearly on a pattern tip. This set was inspired by an outfit in a Japanese fashion mag, wherein all three patterns (zigzag, check and stripe) were represented in a single, lovely outfit. The last photo most closely represents the outfit in question, with the colors printed on a powder blue paper, much like the fabric in the ensemble. I printed three variations--I printed 6 different colors on white paper, I printed a set just with my new safety orange ink, and I printed the aforementioned set on powder blue. Because of the simplicity of the colors (only one color per card, real restraint for Krank Press) I can sell these a bit cheaper than my normal card sets...

new new new

I had so many new things at Renegade this summer that I haven't even managed to get them up on etsy yet. And if you check my sketchbooks and lists and lists and more lists, you'd know that I only managed to print a small fraction of what I dreamt up (in fact, I should probably post some of those lists, as proof of my insanity).

Of the new items I think these little guys are my favorites--as inspired by the old stationery items I used to unearth at one of my favorite corners of the world, Bruce Variety on Bradley & Arlington, downtown Bethesda: blank gift tags in small coin envelopes printed with retro to/from arrows. These turned out so well I think I'll try doing more in this vein--not too too retro, just good basic stationery stuff.