Charlie's Robots

I have not posted in forever! I wanted to capture this project though I did for my sons new nursery. His room is Robot themed, and I wanted to make some wall art. These guys are sporting his initials.

Transferring my design onto the board

Cutting...and cutting...and cutting...

Lots of patchwork, next time I'll invest in tougher wood. 

Getting a paint job.

DONE!

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.

The Pop-Up Book has arrived

Well...we are already pretty much sold out of the book...which is great news, but I realized I never updated my blog when the books came in! It's been such a crazy summer to say the least. We picked up the books in late July and we're down to our last 20 books! We couldn't be happier.

 Here is my brother Brian helping me pick up the shipment in Philadelphia. 

We loaded them up in our truck and drove them back to Rehoboth Delaware

The Book quality was pretty good...but we're definitely going to improve the quality on the second printing. We are sourcing new vendors at the moment.

Here it is at retail in the Sea Shell shop. Retail sales have been going great! The local bookstores have been hosting book signings, childrens readings and promotions for the book.

This was such a great experience, can't wait to do it all over again!

OPTIMUS PRIME PAPER TOY

I don't often post card work that I do for American Greetings on my personal blog, but there a bunch of cards that are available now at Target that I worked on that I'm quite proud of. This being one of those...

Pop out the 4 pieces to build your own OPTIMUS PRIME! He is covered in 3 Hot Stamp colors, Blue, Red and Silver...giving him a chrome finish.

Note: He doesn't stand quite as well as my original prototype, but if you fold up his toes it works pretty weel.

Pick up yours today at Target before they're gone!

Business Cards

I finally got some business cards printed up. It was about darn time! The die cut came out nice...but I added a spot UV gloss...unfortunately the company I printed them with only had 1 paper stock and it was coated 1 side. So the spot UV doesn't pop like I would have liked.

Tshirt designs

I designed these two T-shirt over a few lunch breaks for a possible Tshirt program, but unfortunately they weren't picked up. 

I put them up on Threadless.com for a vote...hopefully with some better luck.

Go to the links below and vote please! Thanks!

LAKE ERIE MONSTER

 

WEAPONS OF MASS DISTORTION

On July 4, 2011, my Grandmother, my brother, and myself decided to create and publish a pop-up book about our longtime favorite vacation spot, Rehoboth Beach DE. The book is complete and should hit shelves July 12th, 2012.

The story follows a family as they spend 'A Day in Rehoboth Beach'. Here they are at the beach off the boardwalk.

This is my favorite page, the horses on the merry-go-round actually move up and down as you open the book.

Here, the family is enjoying a rock concert at the bandstand on Rehoboth Avenue.

This is the first time I've really worked professionally with my brother and Grandmother, and I couldn't have been more impressed. It was really a wonderful experience.

My brother, Brian Allen did all the Illustrations. My Grandmother, Joanne Defiore wrote the story, did the Calligraphy, and handled all the marketing. I handled all the popups and production work.

Visit By the Bay Books for more info!!!

It has been a very VERY long time since I posted anything to the ol' blog.
I've been working on a lot of projects lately, so I'm going to post a lot of back logged stuff and hopefully get myself back in the habbit.
My wife's 30th birthday party was a few weeks ago. I threw her a party at a cool bar in downtown Cleveland, A.J. Rocco's
Here is a poster for the event...

I also made some small table tents with some fun facts about 1982, the year she was born.

I'M ONLY 1-YEAR LATE!...haha, I finally finished the paintings going into my daughters bedroom. They make a better '1-year birthday present anyway'. I hope she likes them! Its been a long time since I painted in Acrylics so it took me a little while to get my groove back.

If you haven't been to StrangeKidsClub yet....what are you waiting for? Quit what you're doing and check them out! I was honored to have been asked to design a paper monster mask for their 2nd annual 'Strange kid comix magazine'. Go to the site and pick one up! Just in time for Halloween!

Unfortunately Sketch Slackers is coming to a bit of an end...well, more like a hiatus. Hopefully I'll be relaunching the site at the beginning of next year. As a thank-you for all the hard work the 'slackers' did over the history of the site I made a quick paper toy for them all. Feel free to cut him out and display proudly!

About time I start posting to my blog again!

Here's a logo I did for a publishing company-

Here are the roughs that got us to the finished logo: