Busy, busy, busy

Lists of things to do/accomplish/check off/see/finish in the next week-ish

-Work field trip tomorrow! Seeing with all of the Clinique creative packaging team with perhaps lunch afterwards...
- Hopefully make a quick stop at the Pratt show after work tomorrow
- AT Offline: John Christakos from Blu Dot at Blu Dot Showroom on Thursday
- finally cracked open my sketchbook from London tonight, finish scanning in drawings that have the potential to turn into patterns
- scan and start to live trace/play with 1920s wallpaper samples that I bought at Portobello Market in London
- figure out/rsvp/plan which parties and exhibits I want to check out for design week
- go to above parties during design week, bring lots of business cards
- trade shows trades shows trade shows! ICFF (of course), Surtex, National Stationary Show and Luxe Pack
- meeting with some Design Dames + Babes to discuss future volunteer opportunities
- BBQ in Prospect Park?
- a very belated Cinco de Mayo celebration with the girls at our monthly baking night
- start writing written part of competition that I want to enter, deadlines are looming!
- go to work plus all the other everyday things!

London

I got back from London almost 2 weeks ago but I have been unusually extremely busy and just found the time a few days ago to put my photos on my computer. I really didn't take many photos and focused more on working on my sketchbook. Once I get my scanner back and working I'll share some pages from that. But in the meantime here are some photos of my trip. Check out the rest on my flickr
Swedish Fashion: Exploring a New Identity at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London


Columbia Flower Market


Portabello Road Market


Roman Baths in Bath


Shopping in Bath (can't remember the name of this store at the moment) Love the wire chandelier


Markets markets markets! This was taken at the Slow Food Market in London


Bath was seriously GORGEOUS and a highlight of my trip, I was probably swayed by the amazing weather that I had there too.


Explored lots of little shops and gathered up lots of inspiration

London is approaching!

I am finally ironing out my London plans. I leave the night of the 8th and come back the 20th. I have been compiling a list of things to do. This weekend I am hoping to put them all together and come up with some sort of loose plan. It is all kind of coming together last minute which is ok by me. For once it feels nice to not be so constrained. A friend of mine has graciously offered me her couch to crash on the second weekend I am there, and I should know within the next few days if another friends roommates are cool with me sleeping on the couch a few nights the first weekend . In between I plan on staying at hostels.

I plan on keeping a sketchbook my entire trip in the same vein as the one that I kept while in Copenhagen. A sort of visual travel diary, documenting color, shapes, patterns and anything else that I find interesting along the way. I haven't been keeping a sketchbook at all since I started working fulltime back in September. It will be 7 months this week. I am hoping that London will not only be a nice getaway but it will also act as an artistic catalyst of sorts for me.

Macy's Valentine's Day Packaging

I am aware that it is way past Valentine's Day but I have had these candy boxes sitting on my desk after I bought them post Valentine's Day on sale. I worked on the pattern development on both of them while I was freelancing at Macy's last summer and thought that I would share! Click on the photos to make them bigger. Oh and btw those chocolates in there are long gone! I couldn't resist.

Fashioning Felt

Earlier this evening I went to the opening of Fashioning Felt at the Cooper-Hewitt. It was a bit last minute since a co-worker of mine decided not to go and I went in her place. Funny because I had actually written a blog entry last night about how excited I was to get to see it over the weekend. I didn't finish writing it because I was so exhausted but instead I have a few photos that I snapped. I really enjoyed it and would highly recommend it!

Wednesday night I attended Apartment Therapy's Offline talk with Katherine Hable Sweeney and Susan Hable Smith of Hable Construction which was extremely inspiring and informative. So much inspiring things happening lately that I am hoping to keep the momentum going! We will have to see what the weekend holds!

Sunny Sunday

Woke up and was excited that it was warm enough to wear my purple trench coat. I paired it with a red dress, an unlikely combination for myself. Little things like color combinations can make my day. Took the bus over to Red Hook and made a quick stop at Ikea to get new curtains for my room. The ones pictured in the above photo in the kitchen I had originally bought for my room but found a new home in there because they were too busy. On my way out I got a frozen yogurt hoping that I would walk outside and it would be warm and wonderful and spring like but it was windy and much more chilly than I had remembered so I had to eat it really fast while shivering. Walked on over to Fairway and got lots of yummy food and got carried away with the 4 grapefruits for $2. Ended up trudging to the bus stop with 8 very large grapefruits along with all of my usual groceries. Happy hour and dinner with friends at a local Italian place ended my day on a perfect note.

Carnarsie Suite

Aimee posted some photos from a recent shoot for her newest show Canarsie Suite Edge of Vaudeville on flickr and I am really loving them especially the colors! Aimee and Jenny are booked for a festival in Brighton, UK and Prague, as I had mentioned previously and it looks like I may end up heading over there and joining them for a bit! Check out the rest of the photos here

Beautiful Stop Motion Animation

via Lee

Wow.

Macy's Tableware

Look what finally popped up on the Macy's website! And already on sale! The Cellar "Indigo Bloom" is one of the tableware sets that I worked on while I was freelancing at Macy's as an assistant designer working on print and pattern over the summer. It is was my first design job out of college and these are the first things that I have worked on to hit the shelves so it is exciting! Sadly you are going to have to wait for any Clinique products that I have worked on for a while, since I started at the end of the Fall 09 season!

Travel on my mind

I would really love this travel journal with illustrations by Lena Corwin I would really love to take a vacation this year and I am thinking of going to Prague. One of my close friends is performing at theater festival there at the end of May and I have been checking the prices of tickets daily. Has anyone been to Prague?

Congrats Liz and Kegan for making Page Six! I love seeing people I went to school with carving their own niche in the design world.

Busy Day tomorrow! Besides the talk that I blogged about yesterday I am hopefully going to make it over to PrintSource and Direction by Indigo for work.I have never been to a textile/surface design trade show besides Surtex, which seemed to me to be lacking the kind of design that I prefer, not as modern and leaning more on the commercial side, so I am quite excited. Hopefully we will come back with some prints and some inspiration to get me started on my own work. Speaking of which, yesterday I finally put all of the magazine clippings/computer printouts that I have been saving up next to my computer desk in hopes to get myself inspired to break out my sketchbook and so far it looks like it is working.

Product Placement 1.2

I was really excited to get an email the other day from Kyra over at Twenty2 about Product Placement 1.2, A behind-the-scenes exploration of textile design with Wook Kim, twenty2, Tom Scott, Heather Dunbar, Amy Helfand, and Heather Bush from Carnegie.

I had interned at Twenty2 my junior year of college. I was interested in learning more about textile design and running a small business and emailed them on a whim and started interning one day a week soon after. I have very fond memories of drinking lots of jasmine tea and helping pick pantones for colorways and thinking wow will someone maybe eventually pay me to do something like this? The answer is yes! and I learned a ton from Kyra and Rob that helped me get a start. Thanks!

Tuesday, January 13, 7-9 p.m.
At Design Within Reach Flatiron
903 Broadway (at 20th), New York

Space is limited. $5 suggested donation.
RSVP to thisisproductplacement@gmail.com.

You'll find me there on Tuesday!

Forgot to share my one thrifted purchase while in NH! I saw the pattern on this dress from across the room and knew that I had to have it. This dress is sitting next to my sewing machine (along with many other dresses) waiting to get hemmed since it is currently floor length. Perhaps this could be a new years resolution of sorts. Best of all I ended up only paying a $1 for it since the linen lining looks like it has some water stains on the bottom.

Happy New Year!

My new years eve festivities included:

+drinking homemade wine and blueberry port with Aimee in her apartment
+dancing to drummers at a gallery in prospect heights
+ringing in the new year at a house party in Kensington

Nothing too crazy. I have been enjoying me 5 day weekend, and it is not even over! Then it is back to 5 day work weeks!

Looking back I accomplished a lot in 2008 and I hope that I continue to do the same in 2009.

+ Put together my portfolio, which was exhausting!
+ took my first road trip with Aimee, her dog and two cats
+ put on an off campus show with my Sr studio
+ graduated college
+ sold my handmade pillows at Renegade and the Brooklyn Flea
+ got to teach gymnastics to many many children in Prospect Park
+ freelanced at Macys
+ saw my first mass produced product that I worked on at Macys in store!
+ Got a full time job at Clinique
+ gained financial independence!
+ tons more wonderful things that I can't think of!



Happy New Year!

Etsy Calendar Love #2

A Year in the Kitchen

I don't usually keep a calendar in my kitchen but I could definitely make room for this one.

Etsy Calendar Love

I am in the market for a 2009 calendar. Usually I end up getting one for Christmas (2008 was Eugene Grasset calendar with each month being a different decorative art nouveau style pattern - good pick dad) but not this year, which is fine by me because now I have free reign of what to choose. Here are some of my favorite picks I found while browsing etsy.



SusyJack Deluxe Wall Calendar

Want want want! I love the simplicity of these, they definitely make me smile. I would display a couple of months at a time right above my desk!

My work at Macy's!

I was really surprised yesterday to go into Macy's in Nashua, NH and see these juice glasses that I had worked on over the summer. I had freelanced at Macy's right after graduation working on print and pattern for their in-house tabletop department. I was under the impression that they were not going to hit stores until next summer so it really took me by surprise to see something I had helped design on the floor being sold! Unfortunately these juice glasses seemed to be the only items that they had in stock with the pattern and they do not seem to be on the Macy's website either! I even asked an employee where the rest of the set was and they said that they had only received one box with just juice glasses (which is funny because I had only worked on the glasses for this particular set) I called my dad and of course he wanted me to buy a bunch. Has anyone seen these around their local Macy's?

Hello from NH!

I am spending Christmas in NH and was greeted with not one storm, but two! It took me 9 hours to get from NY to Boston on Friday (usually a 4 - 5 hour bus ride) and all of our family plans have been cancelled for the weekend. I am snowed in until further notice. I made it out yesterday to take a trip to the doctors (feeling even worse!), and grabbed a pair of snow boots which were the last pair in my size at DSW. I plan on spending the rest of the day sitting around in my pj's with a cup of tea and tissues in my hand, and later on decorating the tree with the family

I went this weekend to see the Chanel Zaha Hadid Mobile Art Container to see what all of fuss was about with my good frined Mino. Thankfully I had reserved two tickets way back in September so we got to walk right into the exhibit and bypass the line where I heard people waited hours in for stand by tickets. I did enjoy it and it had some really wonderful moments such as "The Sidewalk" by Leandro Erlich of Argentina which was a piece that showed the reflection of a cityscape in puddles on the street. After I took off my headset offall I could think of was that it made me wanting something a bit more