Hot Chocolate!

How to even begin???

This past Sunday we held our third celebration of Paper & Chocolate, a collective open house with our neighbors Taza Chocolate. This time, however, I invited five other paper artists to share my space and their work. All I can say is wow.

In the end, more than 600 people came through the shop over the course of the afternoon. Yes, that's six HUNDRED. How do we know? Taza had the brilliant idea to give out stickers to every single person to come through (everyone started off with a chocolate factory tour) and was thus able to track the traffic.

After each half hour tour, the group of forty to fifty people filtered into our space, and if I do say so myself, it was marvelously organized with tables and people flowing naturally around the room.

Below you can see Angela of Carta, Inc. on the left with her ribbons and stamps and beautiful hand-bound books and things. On the right (behind that person in the blue jacket) is Kelly of May Day Studio with my ever-favorite Bingo books, gorgeous journals, and a snazzy set of new holiday cards. On the wall behind them are the incredibly sweet etchings by Emily Goodale.



To one side you'd find Becca Wasilewski with her giclee prints and a series of white-glove-only artist's books on display.



Across the room Melissa Gruntkosky was showing and selling her adorable teeny, tiny, hand-bound books.



Jacob was at the center island manning the Albertine Press sales while I stayed in the back at the Vandy, giving press demonstrations. Which means I helped everyone run their own keepsake on the press, even and especially the littlest visitors (photo courtesy of Angela). After explaining the process two hundred times, (quite literally) I was a bit horse at the end, but I never got tired of the "wow!" that happened the first time a new group saw a print hot off the press.



Sadly, I don't have any photos of our own display. Hopefully one of the other's will pull through and I can link over to them. It's a shame, since I finally got the display right. [They came through! For more pictures and takes on the event, click here, here, or here.] Angela's family came to visit, and here she is with her daughter Nada holding one of the keepsake prints.



The day was an overwhelming success - not only did everyone have great sales, but I met so many new people, and saw many many old faces. So thank you to all of the friends, family, students, colleagues, neighbors and curiosity seekers who came out in the first snow to share a most wonderful afternoon with us. Thank you to Angela, Kelly, Emily, Becca and Melissa for joining me in this venture. Thanks to Brendon at La Tene for the super bonbons. And especially, thank you to the whole gang at Taza for being just about the best neighbors a girl could ask for.