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THE GOOD. Our new print shop manager, Julie, officially started! Brimming with energy and passion for letterpress, Julie moved all the way from Wisconsin to take the job, and we couldn't be happier. Emily and Margaret are throwing a lot at her as we have a ton to print right now but that isn't phasing her one bit. She's already learned how to sweet talk to Heidi and Handsome. Welcome to the team, Julie!

THE BAD. We got a huuuuuuuge order that needed to be filled in the span of just three weeks. That in itself is not bad (pretty awesome actually!). However, coupled with being short-staffed, the situation called for everyone to pitch in with packaging on top of their usual responsibilities. Sabrina probably boxed up 1,000 boxes of cards last week! I brought home hundreds of cards every night for a week and even got a few of my friends to help after work one evening! Now every flat surface in the shop is covered with boxes as we double-count the order and get it ready to ship. 

THE (NOT SO) UGLY. This happened last weekend. Talk about spectacular. 

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(image: inside the White House)

In April, Pete and I took our girls to Washington D.C. It was a near-perfect family road trip. On the way, we stopped in Philadelphia to see some good friends and their baby boy. We ate some amazing deep dish pizza at a place called Square Pie and then swung by Reading Terminal Market to grab a few Amish doughnuts!

(image: Mount Vernon mansion)

From there, we headed straight to Mount Vernon on about the most beautiful day ever. My older daughter, Abigail, is into the presidents at the moment, and she was super excited to see George Washington's homestead.

(image: Avery and the Washingtons)

I would definitely recommend the "enhanced" tour so that you're able to check out the basement and the attic of the main house. Another cool building is (the recreation of) the barn at the Pioneer Farm site—a 16-sided barn designed by GW himself. We had the best day of wandering around the whole property; our only regret is that we didn't have enough time to take it all in!

(image: Abigail and Avery check out the Air & Space Museum exhibit)

Once in DC proper, we settled in and went about doing most of the touristy things that tourists can do. The pandas at the National Zoo—check! The Wright brothers’ first airplane at the Air & Space Museum—check! Family photo op at the feet of Abraham Lincoln—check!

The Hope Diamond and the Butterfly Pavilion at the Museum of Natural History—check, check! We were doing it all! 

One thing we did miss was climbing up the Washington Monument. The girls were disappointed but you need to be in line really early for tickets. I maaaay have been grabbing a cup of Starbucks at the time. I'm kidding!

We queued up at 7 am for the White House tour, which in my opinion trumps a walk up the Washington Monument (if you read not-even-that closely, there's an unintentional political pun in there).

(image: The Green Room of the White House)

The White House tour was definitely worth the email to our Congress person. And thanks to President & Mrs. Obama you can snap pictures like crazy in there!

(image: Abigail in wonderment of Gabriel Dawe's threaded installation)

Another highlight was the Renwick Gallery, located across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. It's an architectural gem saved by Jackie Kennedy back in the day. After a recent renovation, it currently houses an exhibit called "Wonder," which we—including the kids—found (pardon me) truly wonderful. Thanks for the recommendation, Clayton!

We had such a blast with the girls: they were troopers during the car ride (thanks in part to Apple, Inc.), and were as enthusiastic as we were about all the sights! Even just staying in the hotel was exciting to them, which I remember from being a kid (ice machine, anyone?). Our trip was bookended with a stopover on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to see friends. After a delicious dinner, good conversation, and a stunning sunset, we settled in for our last night of vacation and drove home the next day looking at pictures and taking naps!

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Summer always comes with a few givens—high temperatures, trips to the beach, and parties of all sorts. It also, sometimes, means a new Smudge Ink intern! Hello! My name is Ryan Eagle, and I’m the Smudge Ink summer intern! Sorry I’m using so many exclamation points; I’m just very excited to be here!

I’m also excited to share these printable summer party invites with you! When I was coming up with ideas for what to design, I thought of all the big summer parties I've been to over the years and what those involved. Whether it's a potluck or a cookout, there's always the same key component—food, and lots of it.

If you already couldn't tell by the throngs of people hanging by the grill, it's clear the hamburgers and hot dogs (or veggie burgers and grilled corn, in my case) are the stars of the show. I'll always remember the collective sigh of relief when the first batch of burgers were ready. Then everyone would eat, and the cycle would repeat.

Events like these take some planning and preparation, so hopefully these handy (and free!) invites will cut down on that time. Just fill in the blanks, pop them in a 7.25" x 5.25" envelope, and they're good to go. Now you've got some extra time to focus on what's really important—the food!

Click to download and print these fill-in party invitations now!

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Simply, sending love.

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To my excitement (and humbling surprise), I was given free rein to design a creative art installation for our trade show booth. The initial idea was to adapt one of our floral note card designs into a 3-dimensional piece made entirely out of paper. In the end I needed to build three pieces: one would go on the front of our counter and the other two would be mounted on the short wall extensions (called returns in trade show booth speak). I borrowed inspiration and know-how from Anthropology windows, restaurant signage, and Deb's to-scale architectural renderings. For the end concept, I envisioned multiple layers of floral and botanical shapes within shadow-box-like frames.

To start, I made digital compositions of all of the artwork’s shapes in Adobe Illustrator. Luckily, Illustrator has this handy window called "layers" which really helped to organize the process. I was able to place each of the shapes in various layers that coincided with where they would be placed in the installation frames. The shapes were labeled according to frame, paper color, and intended layer. Because I just had our office printer, I scaled everything down to print on legal sized paper. Then it was off to good 'ole FedEx Office and Print for a couple hours of oversized Xerox copying (scaled up 500% to be exact).

These black and white copies would be applied to paper and then serve as our stencils. But first, we found large cover sheets to match the design’s color palette and laminated them together with spray mount. Armed with Easy-Tack (what I aptly refer to as miracle stencil glue), we then applied rough sections of the oversized copies onto the nice and sturdy double-thick sheets. From there, it was time to cut out each of the shapes using the stencil as our guide. Basically, this required several days of intense X-Acto cutting time. If only Sabrina and I had known about the ergonomic Kiwi X-Acto blade holder before this project ensued.

After tending to our callused hands, we were ready to move onto the next stage. We needed spacers to create the depth between all of the shapes we had just cut out. So how does one make spacers? Using the leftover paper, we cut a wide array of colors and widths with the handy shop guillotine in 1/8" increments and then rolled the strips of paper into cylinders with PVC glue. This maaaaayyyy have been just as time consuming (if not more) as the X-Acto-ing—Can that be a verb? Well, it is now.

We glued the hand-rolled spacers onto the backs of every shape, being very careful to select the appropriate spacer according to each shape’s assigned layer. For example, the first layer of shapes received 1/8" spacers. Shapes on the second layer received 1/4" spacers and so on and so forth. And sooooo on and sooooo forth, for a very long time until all of the spacers had been applied to the backs of each of the cut-out shapes. 

Finally, we began to assemble the cut-out floral and botanical shapes within the frame. I had outlines of the composition printed to-scale on large sheets of paper to serve as our “map.” I laid this down and temporarily placed the shapes in their respective places on top. Sabrina may add that this led to many head scratching moments as she tried to follow this map that apparently only made sense to me. With everything in place, I removed the map, channeling the magician who rips a table cloth from underneath a table setting albeit a bit more gently. I then peeled off the stencil paper we had temporarily adhered with the aforementioned miracle Easy-Tack.

And AT LAST, we were able to permanently glue all of the spacers and their adjoining shapes to the installation frame and their neighboring layers. To make sure nothing would come apart during transport, we boarded and shrink wrapped each of the frames and then shrink wrapped them again for extra measure. April, Eric, and Deb did an awesome job setting them up in the booth. I joined them later in the show, and I must say everything came together looking pretty darn spiffy. Had I known this would take a solid month and a half of work and leave us with temporarily arthritis-ized—again I realize not a word—hands? Nope. Would I ever take on another paper installation project? Absolutely.

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