A trend is evolving! A wonderful lady called Sarah contacted me to tell me that she has been using Paper Blossoms as a centerpiece for her various table settings since 2011! She has a blog called Hyacinths For The Soul which has great posts about entertaining, gardening, and other topics related to the home, plus plenty of links to other blogs that she recommends. Go take a look!
I was honored to attend a luncheon yesterday hosted by the San Francisco Child Care Planning and Advisory Committee to celebrate the work of the local teachers and care givers of children up to 5 years old. The reason for my being there was because CPAC as they’re known, choose Paper Blossoms as a centerpiece for all their dining tables. I know of people that have used Paper Blossoms as a centerpiece for a single table dinner party but I never expected it to be used for an entire ballroom full of tables!! This surely must be a first?! Needless to say I felt very honored and spent a lot time chatting with the guests about the valuable work they do and answering questions about my weird profession!
For San Francisco residents interested in learning more about early child care and education here is the link to their website: SFCPAC
The problem with paper engineering is that it seems to take forever before your products see the light of day! Such is the case with the Paper Blossoms Pop-Up Notecards. It seems like an eternity ago that I designed these cards! Well, wait no longer Ray because they are about to be released on March 19th! These cards are based round the ever popular gerbera daisy and come boxed in six different color combinations, making it very hard to part with any of them! For more details click here to visit the Chronicle Books webpage.
I’ve had my head down lately, bashing away at reducing the complexity (i.e. production cost) of my follow-up to Paper Blossoms. The goal here was not to reduce the cost by diluting the spreads, but to find more efficient ways of producing the book. This meant redesigning some of the spreads by combining separate pieces into one, and reducing the number of glue points. Having done that the next task was to draw the laborious dielines! This just seems to take forever because it is so boring!! Thank heavens for BBC and NPR (National Public Radio) podcasts!
Now I have that out of the way I can focus on other more interesting things!
Cover for Yuletide Carolers Pop-Up Advent Calendar by Junzo Tarada
Yesterday I reviewed the latest printer mock-up of this year’s Chronicle Books advent calendar. This features the great artwork of Japanese artist Junzo Terada. I wish I could draw in the wonderful stylish way he does. If you’re not familiar with his artwork take a look here. I don’t have any photos of the finished pop-up to share at the moment, but within the week I hoping. The calendar will be available in August of this year. More details are available at calendar page on the Chronicle Books website.
I have a couple of other projects that I’m evolving at the moment, but those are for another day.
Following my trip to Taiwan and China I couldn’t resist the temptation to make something that both reminded me of my time there and that would be a fun pop-up project. I decided on a very simplified version of an Asian Temple, the real thing of course is very elaborate! I will leave it up to you to choose the style of decoration to add. As with all of these downloadable pop-ups feel free to change the shapes and details and make these your own. This temple can be changed or decorated to represent any Asian culture, or for that matter you can adapt it to a building from any culture, even one of your own invention!
Back home now going through all the photos of my trip, still trying to believe that it really happened!
I’m so grateful to everyone at the United Daily News Corporation for inviting us to Taiwan and for being such great hosts! Many thanks to Michael Yang for curating the exhibitions, and suggesting that we be invited! Also many thanks to Roxanne, Sirena, Monica, Daniel, and Joy, for showing us around, translating, and introducing us to bubble tea!
And if you “really” want more – here are links to more photos and to the exhibition websites (in Mandarin only).
Wow, I’ve covered a lot of miles in the past 48 hours, with either no time, or connection, to post an update.
Marion and I were driven from Kaohsiung to Taichung for two hours at what seemed like an alarming rate, zig-zagging in and out of the freeway traffic. I found out when we got there that it was for a photo opp with paper-engineers David Carter and Kit Lau. I thought we were just meeting them for lunch, so why the hurry! I was great to have all four of us sit down for lunch and discuss pop-up business! I’ve never met so many other paper engineers in one place before.
Four Paper Engineers Go To Taiwan
Unfortunately, I had to leave the party early in order to make it to the airport in time for my flight to Hong Kong. Yet another two hour car journey in the same day!
By the time I got to my hotel in Hong Kong it was after 10:00 pm. I went out for a late night snack and didn’t get to bed until around 12:30 am only to have to get up at 6:00 am to meet my contact from the printer.
Together we left Hong Kong for the Chinese mainland on the Pan Yu ferry – another two hour trip! There’s a pattern here I’m sure!
We then drove to the factory where Paper Blossoms is printed and assembled. The first thing I noticed was that the people working in the factory were not working at any kind of frenetic pace, it was actually very relaxed, which was a relief to see! I then had the opportunity to sit down and discuss the ins and outs of pop-up book production with the technical department, and then discuss some assembly details of my new book. This was very valuable time and I’m glad I made the effort to go there!
Now it’s time to do a quick look around Hong Kong and then to fly back home to San Francisco. Quite a trip!
Today Marion and I played tourist visiting the local art museum to take in an amazing ceramics exhibition featuring artists from all over the world. After some well earned lunch we were fortunate enough to go behind the scenes of a local touring puppet troupe. All the heads and hands are hand carved and all the costumes hand sewn. Tomorrow we must say goodbye to Kaohsiung and head back north for a lunch with two incoming paper engineers, David Carter and Kit Lau.
Our trip became even more special today when Marion and I were honored to be invited to meet with the Deputy Mayor of Kaohsiung, Mr. Yung-Te Lee. Marion and I presented Mr. Lee with copies of our books and introduced him to a whole new genre! We hope to have more for you next time! : )
Marion And I Meet With Deputy Mayor, Mr. Yung-Te Lee
I wish I could adequately convey how enthusiastic the people here in Taiwan are about pop-ups! Two of the largest private collections of pop-up books are here, one of which forms the basis of BOTH (!) exhibitions being held in the two cities, Taichung and Kaohsiung.
Yesterday Marion and I presented our second talk, this time at the Museum of Sciences in Kaohsiung. We had a very interested audience and got to meet collectors, artists, AND some aspiring paper engineers! We were made to feel like royalty with all the gifts and hospitality given to us!! This is definitely not a normal work day for us, and we could easily get used to this lifestyle!
Thank you to everyone for making us so welcome here!!
