This weekend was the Broad Ripple Art Fair – One of my very favorite shows in the state. It’s a hometown show which is always nice and it never fails to produce crowds of amazing, thoughtful, art-supporting people who come out to shop, visit, and ooh and ah over the work of the hundreds of artists who fill the Art Center grounds for the weekend. This years Broad Ripple was my best ever! So again, I love you Indy! Thank you for being amazing.
All weekend long my booth was full of incredible people who bought art, shared stories, and told me about the inspired and imaginative ways they planned on using their new Binding Bee journal, or what had filled their last one up. Journals were bought to give as graduation gifts, travel journals for home and abroad trips being taken this summer, sketchbooks, daily writers, dream journals and more. I even had one incredible family who bought a one-of-a-kind journal to use at their daughter’s memorial. She was an emerging artist last year at Broad Ripple and they wanted something very special to use at her service to encourage people to write memories and love into in her honor. I was so touched, so deeply touched. I love my job and moments like this weekend make me love it all the more.
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
Found this gorgeous quote thanks to Meghan Currie (Myyogaonline) and have had it in my mind all week as almost every day on my walk I see egg shells scattered along the sidewalk from little birds hatching into their nests. I feel like I too get pushed out of the nest on a daily basis.
Seth and I met last summer at an art fair in Nashville, TN. and he e-mailed me a few months later wondering if I would be able to make a special book for the love of his life and soon-to-be-wife, Maggie. He wanted a wedding guest book to preserve the memories of their wedding day as well as hold the love letters (and e-mails) the two had exchanged. We discussed a lot of details, what both of their passions are, their daughter, and all of the things that would be symbolic of the two of them and could possibly be incorporated into their book. I sat with all of the details for a few weeks and tried a range of different things to incorporate their interests, namely horses and music. After toying with literal interpretations of each (sheets music, music notes, horse hair, horse shoes in the shape of hearts, etc.) I got a little worried. It wasn’t coming together as naturally as it needed to and was feeling way to forced. Finally, I let go of my “list” and tried to concentrate less on the details and more on the overall vibe of the book that I felt wanted to come through. There was a very special piece of leather that a few months ago I had cut up and knew it would be used for something really important. I had no design in mind then and hadn’t even heard from Seth yet with the go-ahead, but had it sitting in the studio waiting for it’s turn to be incorporated into something beautiful. I started there. I also had picked up a piece of wood-block printed paper that felt like it was suppose to go into Seth & Maggie’s book, and I gathered that along with the handmade paper for the text block and started to get to work. The metal finding that I used on the cover had just arrived the day before (while I was obsessing over horse shoes made into hearts) and once I saw it against the pebbled leather, I knew the right things had come together (and just in time). The book took most of the day to assemble and as soon as it was done I sent the couple photos to see. They had wanted it to be a surprise but since I had changed the design so drastically, I needed them to look at it first and make sure that my maker’s intuition hadn’t totally misled me into no-man’s land. They loved it. And I love it. It’s one of my favorite pieces this spring and was a design breakthrough for me. Stay tuned for more lovely designs in a similar spirit! The fun is just getting started.
Seth and Maggie's Wedding Guest Book
leather wedding guest book, custom leather guest book by binding bee,
Wedding Guest Book with Library Cards for a Literary Themed Wedding. A unique personal touch for the wedding registry book. Hand-crafted in Indianapolis, Indiana by Binding Bee.
Last Thursday I got a call from the wonderful organizers of the Indiana Artisan Marketplace asking if I wanted to go on Indy Style the following week to promote the show and do a demo of book-binding on live t.v. I said “yes” instantly as the whole thing sounded like it would be fun. And it was! Here is the clip.
This weekend was the Broad Ripple Art Fair – One of my very favorite shows in the state. It’s a hometown show which is always nice and it never fails to produce crowds of amazing, thoughtful, art-supporting people who come out to shop, visit, and ooh and ah over the work of the hundreds of artists who fill the Art Center grounds for the weekend. This years Broad Ripple was my best ever! So again, I love you Indy! Thank you for being amazing.
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