Our Blogs Got Married

My brand new husband and I have combined our two electronic-newsletters into one handy brand new "blog." Please reset your bookmarks at www.themincingmeerkat.blogspot.com. See you on the other side!

Mincy & Frantic at the LA Street Food Fest!

This Saturday, Feb. 13th, Mincy and I will be selling our magnets & cards at LA's first Street Food Fest from 11-5 at the LA Center Studios downtown (500 S. Beaudry Ave.). Admission is only $5 and you get to sample from some of the best food trucks in the city.

Luckily they'll be offering sample sizes at sample prices ($1-$5) so you can try a lot of different foods. I'm starting to make a list of ones I want to try, and I finally told Mincy we had to have a budget of how much we could spend apiece otherwise we'd end up spending all the profits (plus gain around 37 lbs.)! Some of the trucks that will be there include the Grilled Cheese Truck, the Buttermilk Truck, the Sweets Truck and the Komodo Truck.

But that's not all! There will also be 33 artists & designers selling their wares, so if you haven't gotten your Valentine shopping done - now's your chance! Designers include The Quilting Mama, Mr. Toast, Plastique and Three Apparel.

For a full list of food trucks and designers click here.

So take your Valentine downtown for some great food and buy him or her something special from a local designer. Celebrate the institution of food trucks in LA and the fact that it will be 70 degrees and sunny, instead of 20 degrees and snowy like much of the rest of the country.

It's National Stationery Show Time Again?!

Okay, so it's not until May, but planning is in full gear. Mincing Mockingbird and I paid for the booth this week, so I guess we're officially going. Oh yeah, and I bought the plane tickets yesterday and the hotel is reserved. I've got some new cards already designed, though they have to be printed yet. The list just keeps expanding every day. We're hoping that we've learned something from last year's show and the most important thing would be is to not wait til the last minute because everything seems to take longer to get done than you think it will.

Here's a partial list of things to be done:
- order carpet squares
- redesign catalog
- make press kits
- design booth layout
- choose booth colors
- choose booth furniture
- decide how to display magnets
- get cards printed
- write press releases
- decide on lighting
- figure out when to ship everything

Whew! Okay, I'm tired now and must go take a nap. I'll update more as we actually complete it.

I Love You Despite the Warning Signs

As a lot of you already know, Mincing Mockingbird and I got married last weekend in a surprisingly tasteful wedding at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. Well, what does that have to do with this new Valentine's Day card, you ask? This card is the first of hopefully many marriages of our creativity. After much whining about how I needed to add a new V-day card to my shop, Mincy graciously allowed me to use his writing to accompany my artwork for this card. He's ghost-written quite a few cards for me -- I often come up with a crazy image, but then have no copy for it. This is the first one, though, where we took existing wording from one of his magnets and I came up with an illustration for it. Keep your eye out for more MM/FM hybrids in 2010.

She Was Afraid of Clowns

Even though I'm on a "break" from etsy, since it's been a bit slow at work, I decided to start the new year out with a new magnet.

The Frantic Meerkat is Bizarre this Weekend!

This weekend the Mincing Mockingbird and Frantic Meerkat will be in San Francisco for the San Francisco Center for the Book's Holiday Fair on Friday night, 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. For more info click here.

We're also having a booth at Bazaar Bizarre Saturday and Sunday, from 12-6 p.m. For more info click here. Stop by and check out Mincy's panel prints and my new pocket mirrors and comic book!

The Mincing Mockingbird & Frantic Meerkat Visit the Windy City

So--after staying up til 1 a.m. every night this week, making 50 lbs. of magnets and printing hundreds of cards & prints, we're finally ready to hop a flight tomorrow afternoon from Bob Hope Airport in beautiful Burbank, CA (current temp 67°) bound for Chicago Midway Airport (current temp 34° with a wind chill of 24°). Tonight we're going to have a leisurely dinner and then relax by the Christmas tree reading classic literature and listening to Christmas carols, while our bags sit perfectly packed by the front door for our departure tomorrow.

Oh, who am I kidding. There are half-packed suitcases in every room of the house, unfolded cards on the love seat as well as scattered about the studio, and a stack of prints that need to be inventoried to see how many more need to be printed. We have a rain barrel that needs to be hooked up to the gutters before it starts raining all next week. Plus, I think there are containers in the fridge that may be moving.

And it's not due to poor planning, though I admit that both Mincy and I tend to be great procrastinators, but we're also great optimists and tend to think we can get so much more done in an allotted time slot than is actually humanly possible. We also had a bunch of retail stores contact us at the beginning of the week wanting cards & magnets for the holiday shopping season. I'm not blaming them...I'm just sayin'.

So despite our best intentions to not run ourselves ragged before Chicago Renegade Craft Fair, we apparently know no other way to operate. But please stop by booth #125 upstairs at the Pulaski Fieldhouse, Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 5 & 6. We've added new magnets, cards and prints to our already huge inventory (hence all the work). Plus I'll have my new pocket mirrors and holiday cards! And if that isn't enough incentive to stop by, we'll be wearing Santa hats, and it's not every day you get to see a meerkat and a mockingbird in Santa hats.