Wow. I can't believe it is already time for Valentine's day. I totally missed planning a photo shoot for the Isthmus Book of Love - last year I got a good picture of the girl with a heart-shaped cookie. This year, spur of the moment, best I could get was hands in a heart (apparently not cute enough for them to print. Ah well, our ad turned out nicely).
Post-Christmas winter is a relatively slow time of year at the shop, though we are still busy with year-end wrap up. And I realize that I was letting the idea of a slow time of year interfere with actually writing a blog post - there are some new things around the shop to share. In general, I tend to think it is going to be slower than it actually is - a mistake I repeat year after year. Perhaps someday I will learn.
I know I wrote about this already, but how much do you love our new card catalog? It has freed up a lot of space and I had so much fun making labels for all the drawers. There's still some empty space, so I'll have to see what I can do about filling those when we go on our San Francisco buying trip in a few weeks.
Some of our artists have been better than I have been about restocking the store. We received more prints, repurposed playing card notepads, repurposed sweater scarves and armwarmers, Madison lakes papercuts.
We also received our reorder of notecards and paper from Chicago. I love that they arrive with the Paper Source label on them - there's something exciting to me about having items in my store that come from the store that we loved so much and that inspired us in our own retail adventures.
My biggest preoccuation in the new year has been Blurb. I finished up a couple new notebooks for the store. I'm really happy with their new notebook format and am quite enjoying my new calendar that I made (looking forward to making one for the shop for 2013):
I've been rather lazy about restocking after Christmas but Sachi returned from a weekend away and has been busy making her sweet nest and floral charm necklaces.
You'd think I could come up with my own projects to work on, but I immediately had to start in on the same task. That is one thing I love so much about being in business with my sister - the industriousness of one can help motivate the other. Sachi is way ahead of me on necklaces but I managed to finish up a few nest/enamel combos.
Meanwhile, in Valentine news, we have a great assortment of notecards available. We had just a few stray backorders arrive a little late but now we have the full assortment, including the Valentine protest that Sachi was particularly looking forward to. And, of course, there are Banksy cards, which ended up being suitable for Valentine's day as well.
We have plenty of jewelry and sweet gifts to choose from - including the anatomical heart lockets and rubber stamps.
Our craft table has been getting quite a workout. Yesterday we hosted a group of 7 people making Valentines; as I type, there are four people working on Valentines. I do so love the idea of a notecard made/bought from Anthology making its way through the USPS.
In other news, we are looking ahead to our buying trip to San Francisco. The store will be open reduced hours (and services) while we are gone:
Saturday, Feb 18 and 25: 10-6, Sunday, Feb 19 & 26: 12-4
Monday, Feb 20th - Friday, Feb 24th: 12 - 5
We have not been to this particular show so we are excited to see what we bring back for the store, as well as looking forward to the inspiration of traveling. The last time I was in San Francisco was before we opened the store - several stores were of great inspiration in those early formative moments. I'm looking forward to seeing what this trip brings.
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