Movable Book Society Conference 2012

I was fortunate enough this year to have my employer, American Greetings, send me to Salt Lake City to attend the 2012 Movable Book Society Conference. It was one of the best, most inspiring experiences I've had. The conference was a three day event, jam packed with events and lectures from so many inspiring folks. Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of pictures because I was so involved with everything.

The first night we went to the SLC library to see a truly awesome collection of pop-up books 

 There were 100's of books on display

 Great pop-up without the aid of artwork.

 At the Library, Robert Sabuda gave an informative and inspiring talk about the history of pop-up books and his process in creating his amazing books. It was truly humbling and also encouraging to see that his process is similar to my own.

 After the talk there was another collection of rare old pop-up books.

 Since Utah is 2 hours difference from Cleveland...and my daughter wakes up at 6:30am every morning I found myself waking up at 4:30am. So I walked around the city a bit.

 The 2nd day started out with a panel discussion from Robert Sabuda, Ellen Rubin "the pop-up Lady" and the CEO of 'Up with Paper'.

 We traveled to the University of Utah to look at rare handmade books. It was very interesting to see the many different approaches to making one-of-a-kind books.

 We later went to a reception held by a local book store in Downtown SLC.

I met so many fantastic and inspiring artists: 

Chuck Fischer - who looked at our humble popup book and gave compliments...which blew my mind! 

Andrew Baron - Who's work is so incredible...he even restored an automaton that inspired the book Hugo

Kyle Olmon - Paper engineer and all around great guy. He was the MC for the event and did a fantastic job

I could write for hours on this event. If you have any interest at all in paper engineering, popup book collecting or just want to be a part of a GREAT group of people, I encourage you to join this organization and attend the next biannual conference. It really can't be missed! I certainly won't be missing another one. 

Dress Up Station

For my daughters 2nd birthday I built her this dress up station. I found the measurements from this cool blog from Ana White. She has a lot of these 'do it yourself' projects.

It made it real easy, just had to pick up the supplies, cut the wood and assemble it. It was a big hit! She loves to dress up. 

 Had to use wood filler to fill in the cracks and then sanded it like crazy.

I used spray paint to prime and then paint this apple green. It sped it up the process quite a bit.

Cut out some letters, added mirrors and hooks. There are bins in the bottom for jewelry, shoes and hats.