Dear Everyone ~
It is so lovely to receive photos from customers sharing what they’ve done with materials from Bari Zaki Studio. The Cambridge Imprints papers are racking up new loyalists, and I’m delighted to share with you glimpses from three customers who have been creative and dexterous with their recent projects.
Zoe is a new-ish customer who has taken a couple of workshops, including Bookful of Art back in September. She also took my online buttonhole-stitch class through Sonheim Creative, and this inspired her to make a truly swoonable baby gift for a friend. What she did was to stitch a series of sleeves (in other words, envelopes without seal flaps) she made herself from various Cambridge Imprint papers, into a buttonhole-stitch book she made and covered with Cambridge Imprint papers. Zoe credits my Art of the Handmade Envelope Kit with her design and success on her sleeves.
But wait, there’s absolutely more: Zoe made a drop-spine box to protect the book, likewise covered in you-now-know-what. Inside the sleeves are postcards (from you-know-where), that her friend will write on, to describe The New Baby’s memorable moments. I have had the great pleasure of seeing & touching Zoe’s masterful finished book. It is sweet, a superb permanent keepsake, and a testimonial to Zoe’s great affection for her friend.
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Robb is a creative wrapper, with a revolving collection of vintage boxes of all sizes and vintage papers from many lands. Recently, Robb was inspired to “mount” a Cambridge origami butterfly he’d folded...between a pair of plastic hands he’d just bought, on a package he’d wrapped in vintage Florentine paper. (He has now watched the Cambridge butterfly-folding video tutorial enough times that he comments he can fold on the fly.)
Robb also wrapped a little Japanese jewelry box in which he was presenting a thumbdrive (an anthology of episodes of “This American Life”) in a scrap of vintage Japanese paper (which looks somewhat related to the Cambridge origami sheets). He made a little slit in the grosgrain ribbon, threaded the opposite end through, chevroned the ends, et voilà. Not a knot in sight!
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Merrill stopped into the shop back in 2019, with a vision she wanted to share with me. She was making a large number of small ceramic apples as a fundraiser for the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation, honoring the memory of Merrill's friend Amy. She wanted each apple to be ensconced in a little cube that would “present” the apple without its needing to be removed from the box. So, the box would become an integral part of the experience.
Merrill asked if I would teach her to construct and cover the box. What a great “training commission!” Once I figured out the construction, fabric (for the hinges) and paper components, we had a private workshop on how to build the 3 x 3 x 3 box. I also created a highly detailed set of instructions (beautifully illustrated by Emmy Kennett) that Merrill could refer to once at home making them on her own.
In the middle of shelter season, Merrill sent word that she was beginning to cover the boxes and would appreciate a refresher on certain details. We met on zoom for a few minutes to review the hand-out … and she was in business! When she sent me a photo of them all stacked up on her fireplace mantel, I melted! The timing coincided with my announcement of carrying the Cambridge Imprint papers… and I happened to spy several of her boxes covered with those papers! Now, she is delighted to have a local source.
Merrill had planned a weekend studio sale back in November, but the pandemic put the kibosh on that. Now she is developing a website to sell the apples, and when that is up and running, I plan to do a post about it and the Foundation. Helping Merrill fulfill her vision to honor her friend was a personal as well as professional accomplishment for me.
In deep swoon, Bari