Tags Archive
After over 20 years of renting office space in various cool abodes, Simon+Kabuki has flown the coop. We rarely have clients visit us anymore so it made sense to take the plunge and move our offices to our homes now. It saves us quite a bit – no more rent, liability insurance, internet, phone system, etc. Erin and I both live in the same neighborhood and carpooled to work, so getting together to go over projects weekly is pretty easy. I wish I had a separate space for my home office but I think I have another year or two before that happens. In the meantime, I’ve set up a nice little office space in my bedroom. At first I searched the house for other little niches but in the end chose my bedroom. I don’t know about you but if you have kids there always seems to be a pile on the table or shoes near the door or dirty clothes on the floor. That is why in the end I chose my room. 🙂 As I sit here typing the birds are chirping away outside and the fountain is gurgling (and my dogs are occasionally barking and farting, nothing is perfect!). Quite pleasant for the most part! I think I may actually get more work done! Take a look at the history of our office spaces....
My little “work room” had become a place to put crap so I decided to reorganize. I took all of the furniture out so I could get a fresh perspective on the space. Then I noticed that I hate the carpet that’s been in there for 10 years. So I tore it out. Then I had crappy plywood floors. Then I figured since the carpet was torn out I might as well paint. Now it looks like this. It was important to keep the desk clear of clutter so I have a place to do projects and wrap gifts, hence the industrial shelving with baskets so I can see that I already have a hundred spools of ribbon before I run out and buy another one. I wanted a place on the wall to pin up inspirations and momentos so I made a pushpin board out of cork squares. I layered some burlap with a sheet of gift wrap that was too beautiful to use on a gift. The “wallflowers” are from Target.com, they’re super easy to put up and come in other shapes and colors. I didn’t really need a curtain on the window but I wanted a nice finished look. So I glue gunned sewed this valance out of burlap and used some Simon+Kabuki white patterned cotton fabric for the panels. My effin’ home office project is finally almost done. I still have one blank wall that needs some loving care but I’m taking a little break to give my addled brain a chance to air out and come up with something supercute. And hopefully easy....
We are almost done with Holiday cards here at Simon+Kabuki. Just doing some last minute additions to fill in some holes on some of the sites that carry our line. One thing that we’ve learned with licensing our artwork is that it is a very long process. Not at all like our corporate graphic design business, EandI Design. Those clients want everything yesterday and we’ve been trained to respond just like Pavlov’s dog. With licensing, we can work on a design in September and not hear whether it’s been chosen until the following May and then it may not hit stores until October or November! But when it does hit the stores we are like kids in a candy shop. It is so exciting and gratifying to see your stuff out there in the public eye. And it is a lot more fun to tell your kids, friends, family, etc. that you can pick up one of our notebooks at Target as opposed to say picking up our latest semi-conductor data sheet, snooze! We are currently working on home office products for a very large manufacturer. They are really great to work with and we can’t wait to see our stuff in the big box stores next year. Staples, Office Max and Office depot will be carrying the new line. I am including a sneak peak of some of the patterns that we are working on. Of course as soon as they hit the stores you will be the first to know. Congratulations to Anna Driver-Bishop. She was the winner of our Baby Shower kit...
