Garage Galleries is coming up at the end of the month! As I say every summer, this is our favorite event of the year because we get to see (and meet) so many of our neighbors. It’s such a relaxed vibe and it’s just so Forest Park.
This year, we will be back in our own garage along with my craft show pal Andria Green. And in addition to Garage Galleries, we’re hosting Dive Bar Letter Writers in the backyard from 2-4pm. If you’re in the area, we hope to see you!
We celebrated Stationery Store Day with Paper & Pencil this year. They had a pop-up makers market and invited us to participate and, even though it rained all day, we had a great time meeting fellow stationery fans in Andersonville!
Paper & Pencil looked so charming all decked out for the holiday. The store was busy from open to close, proving that this silly little holiday is just what stationery fans needed to truly celebrate the paper and pencils and stickers that we love year-round. Isn’t it just fun to celebrate in community sometimes?
Sidenote: Let’s take a moment to admire this Journey of a Letter poster in the P&P shop.
My helpful assistant gave me a little break so I could go inside and buy some official Stationery Store Day merch. He also brought me coffee and snacks throughout the day and kept inching my frames out of the drips coming down from the sides of the tent. Truly Employee of the Year behavior.
In addition to the official Stationery Store Day items, I bought two cards from Submarine Paper Co, who was also part of the makers market. I love her style!
And in case you’re wondering why I didn’t buy more, well it’s because I was just shopping at Paper & Pencil last month. April, my pen pal from New Zealand, was here for a visit and we spent a day in Andersonville stationery shopping. Pictured is everything I bought that day (except for the Japanese mail frog, which was from Raygun, just around the corner from P&P!)
That’s a wrap for Stationery Store Day 2023! We’re already looking forward to next year. But for now, I’m back in production mode for Garage Galleries on August 26–this time we’ll be in my own back yard!
I’d love to hear how you celebrated Stationery Store Day!
P.S. Here’s how we celebrated the inaugural Stationery Store Day last year!
Garage Galleries 2022 is in the books and I’m finally recovered from a week of mad-prepping and a day of meeting new people and chatting with familiar friends about stamps, typewriters, letter writing, mail and more. I made a bunch of new cards (using the stamps pictured above) and I sold out of every one (except one design, which I am now convinced is a dud!) so I have to replenish my stock so I can add them to my website.
Here was our set-up, similar to last year (which I just realized I never blogged about!) I have so many styles of cards now that my two racks are full, and even my mini rack couldn’t handle the holiday overflow. I’ve come a long way since my very first craft show in 2016!
We did not host in our own garage this time like we did last year. Instead we moved into our friend’s garage with two other artists and Smokey Joel’s Red Hots. That’s right! We had a hot dog stand right behind us! This could explain why I have only a few pictures from the day–my assistant was too busy eating multiple hot dogs (and helping out!) to take pictures of the crowds!
Speaking of crowds, it was our most successful Garage Galleries ever–it was such a gorgeous day and we were in the center of town, so the foot traffic was incredible. Garage Galleries has become such an event–I mean how cute is this crowd of families and pups out enjoying art among the neighborhoods?!
This weekend, I’ll be participating (from a distance!) in the Madison Street Art Stroll here in Forest Park. Because of Covid, Garage Galleries was canceled and the wonderful organizers decided to try this instead. Several local businesses opened their windows to artists who will be displaying their work over the next week. My work is in the window of Local Yoga at 7234 Madison, a yoga studio right down the block from us.
Saturday, Naoto and I will be walking along Madison (wearing our masks!) to see the art and to wave to some friends we haven’t seen all summer. It’s funny how “normal” it feels to make some plans, even though it won’t be normal.
I’ve been working on setting up an online shop for my cards, something that is long overdue… It’s been a slow project listing everything…it’s fun work though! And I’ve made some new cards that I’ll be sharing on Instagram (@adamihasegawa) over the weekend and all next week.
I’ll share my window set-up next week, too. It was fun to put some of my window display skills to work again…though my display is much simpler than some of the concoctions I had to hang at my old job!
I hope you have a good weekend! Take care!
We had a great day in Brookfield on Saturday at the Brookfield Fine Arts Festival. It was such a beautiful day! It was the first day of fall and the weather really cooperated with true fall-like temperatures. Our set-up was similar to Art Dans la Rue and Riverside…next year, I’d like to invest in a new table (ours is small and kind of rickety) and I’d like to work on using more of the tent space for stuff instead of just putting our usual craft show set-up outside. This year was all about getting comfortable with an outdoor set-up…next year hopefully we can perfect it! 
In the morning, it was breezy and chilly. I wasn’t prepared for how cold I would be standing around my tent as the sun was coming up. Thankfully I had a blanket in my car, so I wore it as a skirt to keep my legs extra warm. We also didn’t bring any chairs, so you might say we were a bit unprepared. But we’re both used to standing, so it was okay. 
Naoto stayed warm in the morning by using the exercise equipment in the park. He got a good leg workout there, and running to the farmers market for breakfast and lunch. 
By the afternoon, he was able to take a little nap in the sun while I took care of customers. 
It was our first time doing this show and we got a good reaction to the cards. A lot of people always say it’s a unique idea, which makes me happy that I’m able to offer something a little bit different. It’s always so fun chatting about puns and old stamps with people. 
We ended the show with our usual cocktail celebration. We went to LaBarra in Riverside, an Italian restaurant that we love. I am so lucky to have Naoto who is always game to help out and to man the booth when I need a little break. He’s worth every penny I pay him in dinner and beer.
kimberly ah 