Continuing my interview with Robin Blum, founder of In My Book® — the bookmark and greeting cards in one…

Happy Ending In My Book Bookmark & Greeting Card

How do you go about getting the art for the bookmarks and cards?

I am fortunate to work with illustrator (and Brooklyn neighbor) Meredith Hamilton. I found her on a wonderful listing of artists for hire called The I Spot. I love the New Yorker-y style of her pen and ink illustrations and feel that they are perfectly suited to the slightly irreverant nature of the cards.

How do you select the images? How tied to literary themes — and puns — are they?

There are presently fifteen styles of In My Book. When we first worked together in 1999, I gave the text of the greetings to Meredith and we brainstormed what type of images would work. In My Book, you’re a classic ended up with marble busts of distinguished and scholarly types, reading books of course; you’re a mystery clearly called for one of the great wonders of world (Stonehenge) and you’re some dish was teamed up with a red-hot mamma having fun cooking up a storm. More styles are presently in the works and will be available in Spring of 2012.

Are there any designs that seem most popular? Any trends in terms of the art, or it is mainly a matter of book genres?

The most popular styles are the ones that seem to suit the greatest number of people. Who wouldn’t be flattered by the notion of being ‘rare’ or ‘a classic’?? Publishers Weekly says: “Multi-tasking as both bookmark and greeting card…illustrated with charming pen-and-ink drawings by artist Meredith Hamilton, these sentimental greetings make endearing enclosures especially when the present is a book.”

How often do you add new designs? And when you add new ones, do you discontinue any older ones?

The line began with twelve styles in 2000 and added three more styles in 2003. Next year three additional styles will be added, so there will be a total of eighteen styles. Although obviously some sell better than others, I have chosen not to discontinue the older ones. This is different than most greeting card companies who base their inventory on sales; I tend to think that book readers are more or less traditional and that “you’re a character”, “you’re a hero”, “you’re the last word” will never go out of style.

I think so too, Robin.

The cards have sold for $3.95 (including envelope) since the company started in 2000; buy them now and get a jump on holiday gift giving –and the upcoming price increase in 2012!

I spotted this piece at a thrift shop on Sunday. The “Madonna” appears to be a contemporary image created from an scan of an antique photo which was digitally enhanced, colored then printed. The “My Rosary” seems to be text from an old piece of paper. Together they were simply matted (with an especially nicely beveled cut window for the text) and placed in an old metal oval frame painted black. All together, it has the appearance of a period piece.

I remember when I was little and my parents, aunts and uncles took each of us children to get our silhouettes done as gifts for the grandparents. My parents even had a second set of my sister and I done for our home. It certainly is a quaint and charming way to preserve our childhood appearance.

If you’d like to preserve those memories — in a sweeter and more stylish way than those annual photos taken at school — here’s instructions for making your own silhouettes from SEI Art Studio.

Sculptures from toilet paper rolls by Junior Fritz Jacquet; via.

So, how does the average or budding zine scribbler get through one of these fests in one piece? How do you guarantee that a vibrant day out with your creative peers doesn’t descend into an adrenaline-soaked nightmare of knotted pulp? Well, here’s some advice that I’ve found quite useful – hopefully it might help you too.

In How To Survive A Zine Fest, Martin offers some pretty good advice for any nervous newbie who enters a creative (and perhaps collaborative) community.

Check it out for tips on what to bring, why you should buy a thing or two, and how to navigate the types of tables and attendees at the event.

Hopefully it makes you feel better about jumping in at anything from one of those scrapbooking weekends to a new art class.

Image credits: Photo by Rob Block / Houston Independent Media, at Zine Fest Houston, May 16, 2009, via The Rag Blog.

Instead of making snowflakes the classic way via folding & cutting a piece of paper, how about quilling some snowflakes? All Things Paper has a pattern for making this quilled snowflake:

They say no two snowflakes are alike, so spending the day quilling away snowflakes means endless output. But if you run out of snowflake ideas (or white paper), how about making a mandala?

Images by Deb Mackes.

Just think, you could keep the glow of fireflies in a jar forever with these adorable postcards and note card sets (with envelopes) featuring the latest felt and needlework designs by Melissa Crowe of Checkout Girl.

Image copyright Melissa Crowe of LittlePinkHouse.

I can’t get enough of artist Tamar Stone — her corset and bed books inspire me so much!

With all these projects and interests, I knew she’d collect lots of stuff, but I wanted to know more about what the artist draws from…

I collect a lot of books, images etc. However, because of limited space and finances, I also go to the NY Public Library to do research with their really old books. Before you could find things on-line, I used to go to the library to do a lot of patent research (something I learned while being a para-legal) — and learning how to read a patent’s family history — to get you to other resources.

With the internet, so much stuff is online — but a lot of it is low-res, which I can’t really use, and also you have to make sure the images are in the public domain (due to copyright issues).

As with my latch-hook rug, works are inspired by my travels.

One of my hobbies is “Polaroiding dolls on the road,” which I’ve turned into paper books from Polaroids. I also have a series of bathrooms/outhouses along the road… And meals on the road… But I haven’t had the money to turn those into books (all the scanning of those is just so time consuming, and I rather just keep moving ahead with the sewing projects).

You can get copies of Tamar Stone’s books at PrintedMatter.org: Dolls on the Road: The Barbie and Ken Series. Vol. 1, Dolls on the Road: Baby Dolls and Others. Vol. 2. And you can visit Tamar Stone’s website to keep up-to-date on the artist and her projects.

Etsy artist WHIMSYlove turns vintage and used books into wall art by folding the pages, origami style, for three-dimensional artworks dubbed Writing on the Wall Book Art — and it’s being featured for sale at the Bellevue Art Museum.

Each Writing on the Wall piece arrives with hanging hardware and a keepsake card printed on white cardstock with “stats,” including Book Title, Author, Copyright Date, # of Pages in book, & how many folds were made to create your piece of artwork!