The Sketchbook Project

I simply cannot wait to sign up - but what topic to choose ?!

Earth Day GIVEAWAY

Celebrate Earth Day with Loop’s organic fabric !

In honor of this symbolic day, Loop is delighted to participate in a group giveaway ! We’re partnering with talented textile designers to spread the word about how important organic textiles are to our planet.

Here’s the deal : blog hop your way from post to post, learn a little about each designer and their work, and get inspired by their patterns, colors and possibilities. simply leave a comment at each site to be entered in each giveaway for a total of 12 chances to win !

Loop thinks Earth Day is all about choice – We see it as a day to remind ourselves that it’s the sum of the choices we make in our daily lives that adds up to real change and reveals our commitment to sustainability. All of the businesses taking part in this giveaway have made the choice to stand for organic textiles, tackling the challenges of sourcing, production, pricing + merchandising in creative ways because we all believe that sustainable textile production is a necessity for this planet and its people.

So, for our portion of the Earth Day Giveaway, Loop will be giving away 1/2 yard of the fabric of your choice … ! Choose any pattern from our debut Tela Collection [ honey, prehistory, stroll, inari, shown left to right below ] on either the hemp / organic cotton canvas or the yet-to-be released organic cotton sateen; click each style name for more details. Simply describe the ideal project you’d use Loop fabrics for in your comment below and you’re entered to win.

And the winner is ...

KIA

"Ideally I would use the fabric to make a quilted print kimono jacket for a toddler."

To all of the lovely commenters who took part in the Giveaway, thank you for bringing such great energy to Earth Day and for your thoughtful ideas about our fabrics.

In appreciation of your interest, we'd like to offer you an additional 10% off the launch sale price on all our fabrics for orders placed tomorrow, Friday the 30th. Instead of using the shopping cart online, please email me at elissa ( at ) welcometoloop ( dot ) com indicating your order for the hemp / cotton canvas or the sateen and I'll process your order by sending you a custom 'pay now' button for secure checkout through paypal.

Hooray for the spirit of Earth Day everyday !

Betz White
Birch Fabrics
Cloud9 Fabrics
Cottage Industrialist
Daisy Janie
Harmony Art
Homesweet
ink & spindle
Monaluna
Swanky Swell
Umbrella Prints

little shoes to fill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friends + fans, I have the happiest news to share with you ! As I write this, I am less than 24 hours away from being a mom … ! I am overflowing with so much joy that I have been wearing out the poor exclamation point on my keyboard … !!! 

How can I possibly put into words the last 39 weeks of pregnancy wonder? I decided to keep this huge news private until the last moment, largely because I’ve never been sure how much I wanted to reveal how blended my personal and professional lives are. In reality, I am Loop and Loop is me in so many ways that to even consider a distinction is silly.

Being pregnant has been such an overwhelming act of creation that it has made me quite distracted these past few months ! I’ve tried to make more time to be in the studio drawing, and I have some exciting patterns in the works… My mom is beside herself in anticipation of her first grandchild, and with an increased number of visits, we’ve had more time to doodle together in person over tea. With some incredible new clients –  Paperchase UK, Whole Foods + Art Mart, Buro Vis a Vis in the Netherlands, and LACMA – I’ve had my business hands full as well.

Entering into this next phase of my life is full of so many unknowns, but there are a few things I know for sure.  The next month will find me truly in the moment, studying our new baby’s face, massaging fingers and toes, getting to know sounds and movements and newborn ways…. * sigh *. I’ll also be listening to my own body with heightened senses and greeting my extraordinary husband as a Father … In a month or so when I’m feeling a bit more recovered, I’ll be announcing a baby blog devoted to my adventures in New Baby Land.  A warm thank you in advance to all of Loop’s fans for your patience as I take a little longer to release new paper goods this year - but do stay tuned for updates on the great Newness nonetheless !

Getting back in the Loop

Oh, my ! How Time has played tricks on me … How can it be that my last blog post was [ gulp ! ] in late December ?  Well, hello 2010, and hello to those who happen upon these little musings and eye candies.  SO much has happened here at Loop and in my personal life that I hardly know where to begin.  I think a bit of a round-up is in order, so let’s imagine we each have a cup of something tasty [ a decaf Americano, extra cream for me, please ] and some time to sit and chat.  Here are some of the highlights from the last few months …

Whole-y Cow, Loop’s at Whole Foods !

  princeton store display

Hold onto your hats for some amazing news -  Loop has been approved as a vendor for Whole Foods Market !  I am SO sorry it took me so long to share this ...  It wasn’t for lack of excitement, I assure you … Being approved as a vendor in the Mid-Atlantic region means Loop can sell to the 3 dozen or so stores in the territory from Pennsylvania down to Kentucky – a huge potential market for us and one that really resonates with Loop’s core values. So much more than a grocery store, I love how Whole Foods works for and within the community to spread health and happiness.  We are honored to have our line currently in the Princeton NJ, Plymouth Meeting PA, and Annapolis MD stores.

Part of being an approved vendor means that Loop has to sell to each store individually. I know, right?  I thought such a large company would buy more centrally and then distribute to the various stores, but in fact, each location has its own Whole Body team that selects products based on its needs, store layout, demographics, etc. [ This allows Whole Foods to really support local vendors – in fact, Loop was encouraged to add stickers to each of its products sharing the fact we’re Made In Philly. ] I decided to send little welcome packages to each store in the Mid-Atlantic region, replete with a hand-written note and a small boxes of chocolate.  I contacted local goodness creator, Liz from Betty’s Tasty Buttons, and she made up special little boxes of fudge for us to include with our Hello. I had so much fun wrapping 3 dozen  4” square boxes with our Loop Wrap, finishing them off with one of Betty’s vintage buttons.

So next time you’re buying some John Masters shampoo, a Burt’s Bees lotion, or a yummy Siggi’s Icelandic skyr yogurt, pick up your favorite Loop or Doodlespark note card !

enveloops

Dovetailing with its popular Felt & Wire blog, Mohawk paper has a wonderfully curated new Felt & Wire shop.  Featuring work from a wide range of graphic designers, letterpress printers + other indie paper businesses [ I’ll have to do a whole separate post to show off their work ! ], Loop is honored to be part of this design-focused online boutique. 

I met Felt & Wire’s editor, Alyson Kuhn, at the National Stationery Show a couple of years ago and when she contacted me about doing a feature on our wrapping paper this past winter, I was thrilled.  When I saw what she created with Loop’s eco-luxe wrap, I was speechless ….. enveloops !  Alyson has the most nimble faculty with language, she melts and re-pours syllables to create words according to her purposes and they’re always delightfully pertinent; her emails are entertaining, informative, and nearly poetry in and of themselves.  [ read the copy on her homepage and see what I mean … ] Alyson used our wrap to form unique envelopes, perfect for gift certificates, special love letters, or hand-made cards … and we were thrilled by her suggestion that one re-use the wrap from a present received to make enveloops to gift again.  Thanks, Alyson !

500 possibilities

 

You may remember my post about the 500 Pencil Program from Fellissimo’s Social Designer site. Every month has found the postman bringing me a new tray of delicious colors to work with. It feels a bit like what I imagine the era of milkmen used to be; the doorbell rings and fresh, wholesome goodness is there waiting for you … The latest palettes have been tender greens and yellows, fire-struck reds, sensual purples, and watery blues. I invited my mom – my Doodlespark partner and a true color lover – to create a new drawing for each color palette I receive. Now, as I send Doodlespark drawings to her, I also send a set or two from the 500 Pencil series, carefully marking the color palette on the back of each drawing, along with our customary notes what we’re thinking + feeling about a given drawing.  Above are some drawings in progress …

the house in seasons

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end August, we moved home and office to a new building south of Center City Philadelphia.  The new Old Brownstone is a great corner building, and Loop has it’s own room on the first floor that feels dangerously like a professional office [ it used to be a doctor’s waiting + examination room, we think ] … I finally have a desk AND a drawing table separately … [ oh, did you hear that deep sigh ! ] This may not sound like much, but it means everything to a creative business owner.  In running Loop, I often feel the strong pull of two very opposing forces – as an artist, I have a strong need to forget about the clock, but as a business owner and Wearer of Many Hats, I have to be on top of deadlines, schedules + goals. So this room helps foster both, all with a cozy chair in the corner and cardboard boxes for my cat, Max, to nest in. 

[ That’s Max in the hallway, above, with his trusty sidekick, Spidey.  Every morning, a howling begins upstairs as Max carries Spidey in his mouth down to my office, plops him down to show me what a good boy he is, and then he trots off to sleep.  And every night, as we’re relaxing in the living room, the up the stairs swaggers Max, happy to return Spidey to us and receive extra pets in payment. ]

Also above : The foyer light just inside the front door casts the most celestial light, as do the star lanterns my husband put up for our first house party. The back garden held all 70” of snow Philadelphia received this winter, and as it melted, the birds moved back in.

Gesundheit !

 

my perpetually runny winter nose will thank me when these arrive on my doorstep :
organic cotton handkerchiefs from hank&cheef

the benefits go beyond aesthetics : visit their amazing facts page
. . . it takes 90 years to grow a box of kleenex
. . . an average household spends $30,000 on disposable tissues ?

water dreams in winter

gorgeous photographs that I am adding to my wish list

Kelp and Yesterday I Sat Quietly by Shari Altman

via photographer Jennifer Causey’s Pop-Up Shop

yester -

by Lee Crutchley, via ShareSomeCandy

passion for process

I am a sucker for process : I love when stages of change are revealed because therein lies a level of detail rich with inspiration. Industrial, biological, political, creative – all types of processes intrigue me.

Enter pumpkin waffles.

Not what you expected? But doesn’t this culinary process look so delicious… ? The act of making – smelling, sorting, mixing + measuring – just enhances the ‘yum’ ….

 

I am also a fan of people who love something so much that they pursue its perfection simply because they enjoy it. Visit the Pumpkin Waffles Blog for this yummy recipe : that’s right, a blog devoted to pumpkin waffles. Fantastic !

OPEN loop

 

 

 

 

I am honored and humbled to be featured in an article on OPEN Forum today. Talking with reporters is an odd experience, and it often makes me collect my thoughts in a way that surprises me. Chugging along with the day-to-day work of running a business, I rarely reflect on it philosophies and synchronicities.

Some of Loop’s reflections are shared in the article “Connecting with Experience : 3 Business Owners Share Their Insights” by Marci Shinder as well as the stories of Bruce + Jordan Jed from Longfellow’s Coffee and Dan McHugh from Expense Reduction.

daydreamer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was introduced to this graphic designer yesterday while reading an interview from Samantha Hahn for Working Press [ a new online print gallery from sub-studio ] –
I am interested in learning more about who designers draw inspiration from, so when Hahn mentioned Christopher David Ryan, I had to check him out.

CDR is a Portland-Maine based graphic artist …“ daydreamer, pseudo-scientist, wanna-be astronaut and untrained intellectual who tends to find inspiration in pretty much anything... especially music, the universe, the human condition and natural phenomena. “  I fell in love with his Daydream print [ at the top of this post ] and was really taken by his Daily Postings, a visual diary in an unexpected and delightful horizontally scrolling format. Chris very kindly answered a few of my questions and it’s my pleasure to share his thoughts with you :

EB : Your Daily Postings from 2008 are incredible visual diaries. Do words lead your images or do images tease out words?

CDR : As much as I try to have a method for forming ideas that lead to pictures I never get anywhere. I have sketchbook, napkins, envelopes and various pieces of random ephemera that I have words jotted and images doodled/sketched on. These ideas range from things I think I heard in songs, random abstract thoughts, something that I saw or something that I can't explain. Somehow they are all connected. They have to be. They are all intertwined. One thing leads to another. If I have words, I will think of an image and vice-versa. There are the very rare times that both come at once. I appreciate these times... just as much as I enjoy the time that I have no idea where I am going with an idea.

EB : What do you do to overcome creative blocks?

CDR : I'm about to sound egotistical but I don't have creative blocks, seriously. I have times when I have blocks on "good" creative, but I can't recall a time that I have ever been blocked. I often feel cursed in some way. I find it difficult to not think creatively. It's something that I am currently really trying to work through.

I have a lot of ideas and do a lot of work that I find completely unworthy of being shared with the rest of the world. When I feel like I am in a place where I am feeling this way, I find that I need to step away from working or trying to come up with something. I need to go for a walk, listen to an album, watch a movie, have a conversation, whatever. I find that my best ideas come from simple observation, observing the world around me. There are many ways to do this, but I've found that staring into a monitor or a blank sheet of paper does not always work so well for me.

EB : What are some of the challenges you currently face as a designer?

CDR : Working too much, relaxing too little... and that's about it really. I would love to get more work or get representation and such things ... but I should try harder at making these things happen before I list it as a challenges. Ultimately, I am pretty happy with where things are going for me. Maybe that is a challenge.
Perhaps I could be more of a go-getter...
but I don't think so.

Find more of CDR’s work at :
cdryan.com | mylittleunderground.net | hellosleepyhead.com | alittlemorelikethis.com

im-pressed

 loving these coral placemats from chilewich’s Pressed Vinyl Collection