fa la la ...

I have a very cool job as a designer of holiday greeting cards, wedding invitations, birth announcements, Bar and Bat Mitzvah invitations, and stationery. It is my great fortune to think about momentous occasions all of the time. Celebrations, life's most memorable events involving family and friends in cool places around the world. I consume everything about design, color, texture, technique, fashion, decor and history, roll it all around in my head and create...I am so fortunate to do what I love and work with extremely talented people (check out the artist friends to see their personal work). What is even more outstanding is to see my designs being chosen by brides and grooms, new parents, parents of mitzvah kids, and people that just love paper and the art of presentation.

Someone who understood the passion of paper was Louis Prang, the father of the American holiday greeting, came to the US and settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1856. It is here that he started rolling out lines of prestigious greeting cards. I read that people used to count how many "Prangs" they received. Unfortunately, cheap foreign-made knock offs put Louie out of business in the card division. Fortunately for all educators and art lovers, he also was passionate about learning and printed the very first artist's instructional text, others followed. Prang crayons? Yup, that's him. Louie Award at the National Stationery Show? Yes, indeed. The award for creative excellence in greeting card design.

When you send your greeting cards out this year to your family and friends, know that some deep thought and resourceful design went into them by someone who gets to be passionately creative everyday, especially if they were made by me!

images from above red swirl, chocolate & blue holiday and winter branch: www.einvite.com/festival

Sea Glass and Nostalgia

Having fun on Etsy today, I came across items made by Jodie of Lake Erie Beach Glass. Her items tugged at my heart. I have been an avid sea glass collector since I could walk. I was trained by my mother and aunt on the long sandy shores of Nantasket Beach in Hull Massachusetts in the 1970's. Paragon Park and the days of skeeball there are long gone. I have to say, I can't go to the beach without walking the shores looking for those colorful treasures in the sand.

This summer at Doi Mai on the shores of the Black Sea, I came across a treasure trove of amazing sea glass. It was mine for the taking. Unfortunately, my eight month old was in the Baby Bjorn and I was pocketless! I stuffed as much as I could in every possible fold of clothing. It was like finding a pirate's bounty. My older children continue the tradition now, every summer on the secluded shores of Washburn Island, in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Soleil and I doing our best to find the treasures of the Black Sea at Vama Veche.

Thank you Jodie for making such cool and nostalgic treasures!