Tricia’s poster party is over. The end. Archives. History. Gone with the wind.
Are you hungover? I am.
In case you want to re-live the past (I do), Click here & scroll to take a trip down poster-party-memory-lane, or just use this post as a kind of poster party table of contents!
Tricia & I thought it would be fun to bring the poster party to a close with a summary which embraces and connects all of our wonderful poster party artists. In Tricia’s brilliance, she came up with the following:
Pete Cardoso recently acquired some notable Elvis recipe magnets, and a wall of Kevin Mercer’s home features a velvet Elvis. Kevin Mercer loves Robert Rauschenberg, whom Tad Carpenter strongly supports. Tad Carpenter happens to be inspired by Golden Books, which Mike Laughead cites to describe his design aesthetic. Perhaps as wee tots, Mike Laughead could have compared Ninja Turtle sketches with Leia Bell (and Sean of the Bubble Process). Leia Bell and Mike Klay cosmically both own a few Jay Ryan prints, which (if the stars were super aligned) might be the same prints. Mike Klay is inspired by the Pacific Northwest, which Sean might also enjoy since he is currently obsessed with the woods. Sadly, Sean does not get to see his teammate, Rez, very often (Rez described this unfortunate situation as QUOTE “SAD< CRYING RIGHT NOW>”) because he lives in Brooklyn, New York. This great state happens to be where Jason Munn made his best recent purchase: Japanese design books. Whew.
To recap:
That’s it! Stickers & Donuts may be slightly hibernated (I know, that’s grammatically & scientifically incorrect) for a week or two, as our editors (all two of us!) have to take (1) GRE and (1) LSAT. But we do have some fun things planned (ie Tricia’s first currently obsessed! How to dress like a poet!). Yay!
So, Tricia just completed her AMAZING series on poster artists (see all the poster party posts here! scroll!). I’m not just saying they’re amazing because they’re on Stickers & Donuts. They actually ARE amazing. From the posters, to the interviews, to Tricia’s hysterical pop-references (if you only looked at the pictures seriously go back and read the posts!) — I loved every bit of it! In fact, I was jealous of the superiority of Tricia’s interviews to some of my recent posts. (A pink laptop bag? Come on Maria, you can do better than that in the midst of poster interviews! Although, it is a pretty sweet bag…)
That being said, I love all of these artists and am going to squish on into the fun with my two cents (slash 142 dollars).
There was one small problem with Tricia’s posts. She made me want to purchase A MILLION PRINTS! After a little research, I soon learned that I COULD own a poster from each artist for less than $145 (plus shipping & framing, see the receipt I invented below). As you can see from the image above (posters not to scale, frames from my favorite free stock photography site), this is a really good deal. If you have a new apartment, you might want to consider decking-out your place in these guys.
Below are the EIGHT poster-party prints I choose simply to prove that you can own art, and it can be lovely, and it can not cost you hundreds of dollars! Go, look! (more…)
The Seven Rules of Astronomy from Iamstillalive.net
(handset wood type letterpress poster, 13×20, $30)
“Two Semesters of intensive astronomy distilled into seven handy rules” (IAmStillAlive.net).
I took an astronomy class and absolutly loved it. Had I been an astronomy major, I hope that someone would have bought me this print, written “happy graduation” on the back, and then put it in a nice frame with white matting. Actually, I kind of want it even though I didn’t major in astronomy.
We all know and love moo.com for its mini-cards (which, incidentally, lots of people were using as business cards at the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn this year), but I just found out (from Etsy’s blog The Storque) that Moo.com now prints full-sized business cards.
Like the mini-cards, the full-sized cards can contain a different image or different text on each card. The images can be pulled directly from sites where you might already have them uploaded (like facebook, flickr, and etsy). You can use moo.com templates or upload the front and back of your card from a file you’ve already made. If you order 50 cards ($22), you also get a cute little free holder for them.
I love this sample of business cards from Spreadshirt (top of page). There are also a bunch of other examples of crafty business cards on moo.com. And, as always, I wouldn’t recommend only using them for business. I’m sure there are tons of crafty things to do with 50 rectangular cards (I smell scrapbooking, mini-christmas cards, mini-photo albums, etc)!
Today I’m reporting back on just some of the prints I enjoyed at the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn this past weekend (for all kinds of other Renegade Fun, click here and don’t stop scrolling!)
There were way too many lovely & wonderful prints for me to collect them all here, so don’t think this is a comprehensive collection of the creme de la creme. Although these guys are pretty, er, creamy.
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How adorable are these old school silkscreened prints (below) from animalsleep? If you want to go straight to buying a print, click here. They’re about $20-30. Very affordable for such lovely things. (**Oh, and can you not buy this one? Because it’s my favorite.**) They also make shirts and other whatnots, if you’d rather wear your art.
Sycamore Street Press is a letterpress studio that makes lovely, lovely letterpress cards (featured on all kinds of blogs these days, too!) — very delicate, a lot of pastel colors — so why is it that I gravitate towards the print below (available here)? It’s only $20 and I think it’s so funny!
I have a little place in my heart for linoleum printing (though I’m kind of/a lot jealous of these!), so I got pretty excited when I saw Tugboat Print Shop sitting right before my very eyes with their linoleum blocks out for show. (”These are the linoleum blocks you print from?” I ask stupidly, artstruck.) They range from about $20-80. (I happen to like this dragon and this house.)
And I can’t forget these Renegade Craft Fair screenprinted posters. They are like the posters you get at band concerts. Except better. And for a craft fair.
And I love the screenprinted posters from Strawberry Luna!
My (albeit limited, perhaps I’ll try again tomorrow!) quest to find the business card of the printmakers below has failed (hmm, why can’t I find that business card?). If you know who they are, please comment below!
WARNING::WARNING::TONS OF POSTS COMING UP::WATCH YOUR WALLET
When I arrived at the Renegade Craft Fair, I started collecting business cards with two purposes in mind:
But, alas, with over 200 vendors, some of them sharing a table with a friend, there suddenly became way too many business cards to even carry in my pockets (see pictures above)! But, as it goes with pretty things, I couldn’t help myself and even forced my partner-in-crime to take some, too, if the back and the front were both pretty (I didn’t want to seem like I was hogging all the business cards, even if I was).
When I arrived home, though, the poor scanner couldn’t handle such a load of cards, and thus I laid-out a few (okay, a bunch) of my favorites on a bulletin board (click on the picture for a larger view).
One big business card theme was the use of Moo.com’s MiniCards, which are about 1/3 the size of a regular business card, and each card can contain a different image. Some crafters choose to place random images of their crafts on the back (front?) of their cards and others choose to alternate between a few images or logos.
Since this was a big gathering of DIYers, there were also lots of hand-stamped, hand-cut, hand-pasted cards. Others were printed more traditionally. One of my favorite business cards included My Imaginary Boyfriend, which had a black and white photo of a high school boyfriend on the front, and thus looked like one of those pocket yearbook photos you share with friends (near bottom of left of bulletin board photo). Another favorite was from Timber!. Their card was square, but still convenient for a pocket, and the back looked like tree bark (bottom right hand corner of bulletin board photo).
But my favorite business card, hands down, was from Iskra Print Collective. Although I usually don’t like business cards in the shape of large pamphlets or postcards (ie things I can’t fit in my pocket or wallet!), I was so pleased to see that these pretty business cards could fit on my face! There were many glasses types to choose from, but I picked these (it was between these and the aviators!). You can checkout Iskra’s print shop online.
Subtle Circle offers the kind of cool randomness I tend to enjoy, with updated collections of various kinds of arts from prints to t-shirts to — well, you can see for yourself with the list above.
Right now they’re offering four wilderness prints for $20 from the Wilderness Collection (see below).
And previously they’ve offered buttons, badges, and T-shirts (in The Cold Collection and The Beer and Skittles Collection) but they’re young, so more (I imagine) is to come.
Mostly, though, I enjoy their watercolor-inspired web-site, which is a refreshing change from all of the cold, hard type you see everywhere else (er, like here).
I’m so excited about my upcoming visit to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (it’s there until May 18th, and it’s the exhibit’s only stop in the northeast!) that I’m devoting a few blog entries to Frida Kahlo fashion, merchandise, & general Frida-love. I have mixed feelings about a plague of merchandise created in honor of someone as cool as Frida. (Would Frida, communist at heart, would’ve even liked such a thing?) But, on the other hand, as far as branding goes, I would rather have FRIDA written on my shirt than ABERCROMBIE.
There are a lot of graduations & birthdays in May, and I generally expect to give friends & family something artsy and personalized (same problem at Christmas) along with their gift. So, how do I make my presents LOOK personalized without having to hand drawn 15 cartoons or make a dozen scrapbooks? I get crafty about my crafts.
Linoleum prints are easy (but don’t seem easy), are really fun, and can be completed while watching Netflix movies. Although you need a “linoleum” block, these blocks are not actually made of kitchen-tile linoleum (as some imagine), and are not actually that expensive. Supplies can be purchased at stores like AC Moore, or online at places like Blick. A simple starter set (that’s what I have) is less than $25 and can be easily supplemented with linoleum blocks that cost from $1-$10 online, depending on the size.
How do you create a cool linoleum print? Well, this is how I do it:
This graphic designer seems to make a business card every time he changes locations. In fact, he recognizes his own obsessive card creation habits (okay, there are only four, but still) because he lists his reasons for creating each card (such as “people assuming I’m in the navy,” top left). (more…)
