Studio Dogs!

Say hi to Atari and Twink, our semi-regular visitors to the Paper Bicycle studio! They help make long days seem a little bit shorter, and give us an excuse to rip our eyeballs from our monitors every now and then.

Twink's the little one, Atari's the big one. They're best friends and love people and they always wear the most stylish fashions.

So if you visit Paper Bicycle Towers, remember to bring along a couple of dog treats! Just make sure Twink's is a diet treat...

Old and Rare

Francesca and I spent an hour or so looking at all sorts of design books at Barnes & Noble a day or so ago. Of all the books one caught my eye. I held it in my hand for about 20 minutes as I looked through some other decorating books, crafty books and all sorts of other things. I know it's bad, but I often try and see if Amazon can beat the price of Barnes & Noble (They usually can...) and if so, I'll get it there.

After some frantic and difficult searches I found this blog:
Bibliodyssey.blogspot.com.
that lead to the book I had been looking for:
BibliOdyssey: Amazing Archival Images from the Internet
It is a compilation of a million different (and weird) images from old litho plates. Some medical, some just funny...

My searching the internet lead to a ton of other great places to view similar types of illustrations. I am a softy for these very technical, super intricate illustrations, so when I found a site that allowed you to purchase old plates for $30 and up, I wandered around the site and found some fun images.







At one point Francesca recommended the book Webster's Visual Dictionary - which is in the vein of all this other antiqued artwork.

Here is another neat blog I found that shares the same topic : Antique Prints Blog It seems this one is much more informative of where these prints are coming from, what topics they describe, and other fun information about the days of olde.

And finally, here is another fantastic book that should grace your coffee table at home. It's huge and expensive, but quite beautiful.
Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765

BLOGS: Urban Sketchers

Sketchbooks are among my favorite things. Keeping one makes me happy, and seeing that other people keep them almost even happier. I also love going to new places, so when I ran across this (rather popular) blog, it was a dream come true.

Urban Sketchers is a blog with many participants. The criteria? Life sketches, from all over the world. Scrolling through the entries is like taking an illustrated international journey. The drawings can vary from enormous cathedrals to an individual plate of food. The media is varied too–all kinds of paper with all kinds of ink, paint, and graphite.

It also has a Flickr group, which is easier to join than the actual blog (there's some kind of initiation process).

Oh yeah! For a little Paper Bicycle hometown pride , the Twin Cities has an Urban Sketchers spin-off blog!

Illustrator: Julia Rothman

While scrolling through the ever fascinating website DesignSponge, I kept stumbling upon the work of Julia Rothman. Aside from being an absolutely fantastic Illustrator, she also is co-owner to a design company named Also.

What attracted me to her illustration work was her elegantly loose line work as well as her delicate, and limited choices in color. I also love how she draws attention the somewhat mundane aspects of the city, people or everyday objects. I mean look at those awesome sneakers!

These examples are, however, only her hand-drawn illustrations.

If you run over to her blog you can also take a peek at her gorgeous paintings and her digital work.

Enjoy!

IAMPETH - calligraphy

A friend of mine, Zac Schauer, sent me a link to this amazing scanned library of calligraphic resource books. They've all been painstakingly scanned in and are free to review on the site www.iampeth.com/books
Already, even after sifting through one or two of the PDF books I can see there is a TON of amazing hand-done typography, most of which has lessons on how-to.

I read an article a while back that was complaining about the lack of attention paid to penmmanship in today's schools. People say that because kids these days have more reason to use computers for lessons and papers, that noone really focuses on using penmanship. I admit that even my penmanship (while it was never fantasitc) has definitely gone down the drain.
CBS posted this article about the topic.

I also remember reading that the height of one's ability to write beautifully is somewhere in your 20s - and from there it starts to diminish. I spent about 15 minutes looking for the source of that fact, and although I'm almost positive it was in the book The Thing about Life is that One Day You'll be Dead

If you put any number of phrases about penmanship into google, you'll end up with half a million results complaining about the fading purpose of good penmanship. I suppose those of us who appreciate it for it's aesthetic purposes are also probably the same people who like receiving a hand-written letter in the mail.

DESIGNER: KALLA by Hitomi Kimura

On one of my etsy binges I found this fantastic collection called Kalla by Hitomi Kimura.
She's a surface designer based in Japan who creates the most wonderfully graphic patterns and screenprints them onto fabric by hand. Her products are made with eco friendly inks. Many of her patters are printed on Cotton (whether they're in the form of a screen print or fabric for her home products.

Her color choices are super vibrant and happy - a fresh version of a "Brights" palette with some great limey greens and eggplant purples.

I love that all of her patterns are geometric with an organic twist.
I think that tea cozy belongs in the office. :)

BEAUTIFUL THINGS : TEA TOWELS

A: Spring Tea Towel by Claudia Pearson; B: Tea Towels: Men Design by Kalla; C: Hello Vase Tea Towel by Leah Duncan; D :Hand Printed Gourmet Flour Sack Tea Towel by The House of Bouton; E: Bottle Chrysanthemum Tea Towel by Flower Press; F: Batik Tea Towel - Wisteria / Trellis by 5 o'clock Crows

Here are some fantastic Tea Towels for your fancy kitchens! I love the unexpected teals, citron greens and dirty cool colors in these items. I would love to replace all of the crusty towels in my place with any or all of these pieces! They look really bright and airy - and a little summery! I love the drawings in Leah Duncan's collection quite a bit. I love the way she layers her elements and her colors are really sharp. I'm also liking how this whole group shares a really evident human quality to the patterns, graphics and drawings.

I AM IN LOVE WITH THAT SHARP GREEN!

Magic Bookends!

What? Are you a freakin' wizard? You'll look pretty magical if you've got these amazing, floating, Arrow Bookends from NeatoShop on your shelf!

Mathew Albanese

Matthew Albanese creates stunning, emotive landscapes using unexpected, everyday items and forced perspective.



The terrifying tornado above? Nothing more steel wool, cotton, ground parsley, moss and a lot of awesome.



Take a look at the amazing project on Mathew's Behance profile, and if you want the illustion shattered, check out his Flickr profile.

OFFICE : Moving In - the Before Shots

Lets take a mini-tour! Here's the entrance, right off Lake Street


Moving our things in - surprisingly even the couch fit in this elevator


Our bright (green) and shiny new office space!


Looking out our 6th Story Window towards Downtown Minneapolis


Now, lets look toward Midtown. You can see St Paul all the way off in the distance

Here are a couple shots of our move into the new space in the Calhoun Building. Right now the space is a drab dirty light green on one side and olive on the other. It's on the 6th Floor of the building, a couple steps off the elevator. When we moved in we took a quick look around the floor to see who our neighbors might be. It turns out we have some wedding planners, a personal trainer, some programmers, an architect, and a hip-hop dance studio to share the floor with.

When we moved in, Melissa, the Land-lady, told us that the Hip-Hop Studio (essense of prodigy) was going to be loud.
Chris and I were a little worried about what that might mean. We were there late one night moving some more stuff in when we heard them start up the jams. They have great taste in music!

It's been about a month since we brought everything in and we're getting antsy to redecorate. I figure it'll be fantastic taking one of these weekends just to redo everything we can. Hopefully after the re-do, we'll post some pictures and throw a big opening party!

TREND: CAMPERS

A: Set of 2 french caravan cards from Made In France; B:Laser Cut Acrylic Vintage Airstream Trailer Plastic Perspex Necklace by Action Jackson; C; Camper Vessel by Paige Russel; D: Recycled Lime VW Bus Lunch Bag by The Crafty Pantry; E: In it for the Long Haul - Anniversary Card by Paper Parasol; F: Cute Pillows from Tilly2Shoes


Here's a really fun new theme : Campers! Etsy is crawling with Camper-flavored items within home decor, stationery & accessories. Here are a few of my favorite pieces.
I especially love the piece by Paper Parasol. It might be my stationery obsession talking, but it's a super-cute illustration and such an awesome twist on the anniversary theme!


Last April, Chris and I went down to Austin, Texas for a day, on the way to my Grandpa's 80th birthday party in San Antonio. We had heard about how great the crafty community was and booked a hotel really close to one of their most popular crafty streets. As we were walking up the street we saw a bright silver, old fashioned camper with a HUGE cupcake on top.



It was a mini bakery called Hey Cupcake that only sold a handful of different types of cupcakes. THEY WERE AMAZING. If you're ever in Austin, They're located on the 1600 Block of South Congress. You'll see them set up in what looks like an empty lot - with a couple other food vendors. After you're done with your cupcake, go shopping at some of the cute stores they have nearby!

Updates on the Site

Besides all of the blog-making we did last night, I spent half the night updating our website. We've now got a couple new pages, a different layout, and links to a bunch of really cool stuff like our soon-to-be-big list of great art books / resources and our Packaging Gallery.

All of this site redoing is getting me excited to decorate our new office space. I've got visions of pale greys ( big surprise ), LOTS of white, and a ton of fantastic artwork hanging salon-style on the walls. Pretty much a follow-up to all the grey/white that we've got on our updated site.

Take a peek around our new-and-improved site, and let me know what you think!

We've Switched Over!

After hours of planning and even more hours of fixing, we've finally created the skeleton of our new Blog! Here we're going to be sharing our work, freebies, favorite artists work, books, resources, and special finds.

It's been a long time coming - Thanks to Chris for helping me pour over the code, features and graphics! Hooray for New Projects!



Here is Chris, snacking on his fingernails, working very, very hard to get this up and running! You can see a little bit of our office here (mostly the mess I keep on my desk.)
It was pretty much a quiet frenzy last night getting everything together: between revising graphics, to uploading (and re-uploading), to scrambling to eek in and get a table at Fuji-ya before they closed last night.

We finally celebrated around 2am last night when it went up!

OFFICE: Our office door is official.



We've been in our fantastic new office for about a month and it already feels official. We're all moved in for the most part, we've got a shelf full of tea, and Dean is back here to keep us company. Besides all of the regular move-in stuff, we've gone official with our Paper Bicycle Decal on the door!

We're now on Lake & Lyndale in the Calhoun Building! It's one of the only arts buildings in Uptown Minneapolis. We have a space on the 6th Floor overlooking some amazing views of one of the busiest corners of the area and have our pick of our favorite lunch places, coffeehouses and gelato.

Now that we've got the sign on the door - feel free to stop by and say hi and tell us how it looks!

Chris is Here!

Welcome Chris! Chris has officially joined Team Paper Bicycle! Chris has been with us in spirit for the last couple years but has finally moved over for real! He's currently in charge of the seasonal decor side of things! We're super happy he's here with us and can't wait to hear him pump the jams in the studio.

Yeah Chris! We're so happy you're here!!

New Business Cards

Here's a Peek at the multi-colored madness we're getting for our new business cards! Each designer has a couple different colored cards to choose from - back and front are different, and card-to-card they're different! Just in time for all of our summertime tradeshows. Can't wait to get them back from the printers!

Fantastic Packaging Photo Shoot (+ Some Monsters!)

Here are some great shots (thanks Chris!) of Francesca and I setting up for a great packaging photo shoot! We signed out the studio at MCAD to do these sweet beauty shots and thanks to Chris & Francesca we were able to get some fantastic work! I'll post some of our great shots in the portfolio soon! In the meantime, here are some sneak peek pics of last Saturday's sweet shoot!

Francesca & Lindsay setting up a great shot!

Pre photo-mocking on the floor of the sweep!

Lindsay at the sweep!

Putting the finishing touches on some sh-monsters!

Home Decor Position Opening

Send me an email if you are interested and send me your resume and cover letter & I will pass it on!

-Lindsay

Look for us at Walmart! Easter Seasonal Candy!

Make sure you make it over to walmart to see some of the packaging we've done for their easter program before it's all gone! We've got Cocoa Clusters, Cotton Candy, Animal Cookies, and more! I'll post a couple pics of the pieces we worked on once I get my hands on some samples!

Here's a production pic of one of the cute designs we've done for Walmart! I'm super excited that our work has been featured in their seasonal aisle!

I'm Organic - Tee Design

Chris just finished a great illustration for the fancy relaunch of Imorganic.com!
Take a peek! Maybe even get one for yourself! :) Great Job, Chris!!

Looking for an awesome intern (or two!)

Duties would include (but not limited to): Being awesome, creating artwork for various product categories (stationery, apparel, giftwrap, home and gift product), assembling mockups of product, creating dielines and production ready files to send to print (or to vendors), trend research, trend shopping, working on marketing & promotional materials, updating twitter, facebook, etsy, and a bunch of other stuff. Interns can also potentially travel with us to one or two of the stops on our tradeshow schedule!

Internships are unpaid but will offer school credit and lots of cupcakes and tea.

Welcome, Dean!

I would like to introduce, Dean! Our Studio Bird-Friend! He's come all the way from
South East Minneapolis to be with us in our uptown studio! He's a funny guy!

Dean's a Pink Canary (a pinkish version of the Red Factor Canary, to be precise) and what
a fantastic guy he is! He's just about a year and a half old and is an adorable singer!
We're so happy to have him here!

Young & Fresh

WOOOO! We're steadily building the Art for License category of the Paper Bicycle Site! We can't wait to showcase Francesca Buchko's new collection! Launching soon!!

Juna's Booth

Hi there!
I have been meaning on posting this cute pic of the Juna Booth! I work with them to create patterns for their collection! In addition to the project work we do, I contribute every month on a variety of topics - particularly kids and teen artwork!

Here's what it looks like! I'm so proud to be working with them! - Lindsay

We're on Twitter!

Thanks to Francesca for setting it up!
We're live on Twitter! So if you get a hankering to see what we're up to - feel free to take a look or follow us!
http://twitter.com/paper_bicycle
Yeah!!!
- Lindsay

New Place, New Space!

Hi there!
So June has been an interesting month! We've got a new studio space and it's been moving time for all of us!
I've got a lot of new help these days which is awesome, and it seems that the shelves have been easy to fill with all of our new samples!

Thanks to Chris for some extra fun prototypes from some of our product lines, and for the great photos!

Hopefully there are more photos to show of the layout soon!

For now, here's a preview! (Cross posted with Lindsay's Sketch Blog!)