I’m excited to be back at the Coolidge Corner Arts Festival this Saturday. Hope to see you there!

It’s always exciting to see To Boldly Fold books out in the wild.

This particular one is used for lab notes and experiments.

Want to share your To Boldly Fold book? Add yours to the Friends of To Boldly Fold Flickr Group!

I found out today that one of my books was stolen from Craftland, a lovely little shop in Providence.  If it was just a blank book, it would be one matter, but sadly, it was the one of my sample books. When I sell my work at shows and in stores, I try to provide a sample book filled with journal entries and drawings to show the ways you can use my books. 

The pages usually look something like this:

or this:

I’m really saddened for many reasons.

Stealing is not cool, no matter what, but to steal from a store full of handmade goods is just cruel. 

Also, I don’t understand why you would steal a book that is already filled with someone else’s drawings and writing. What do you do what that book?

Below are some images of what the book looks like:

It has a rust colored suede cover, a gold colored metal anchor button, and is sewn with salmon colored thread.

It’s a medium side book and measures H 6.5” X W 5” X D .75”

On the last page of the book on the bottom left hand corner is a stamp with my logo and a serial number of 112040.

I feel like I’m writing about a lost dog. I’m upset that someone stole something of mine and that they had the guts to go into such a wonderful store and steal from them.

If you see this book, I’d appreciate it’s return to Craftland in Providence.

Thank you.

-Melissa

Things have been a bit crazy, but very exciting around here. Last week we found out that we will be showing at the New York International Gift Fair in August! We won the Carol Sedestrom Ross Maker-to-Market scholarship and are so thankful for this opportunity. We had been talking vaguely about diving into the wholesale market for months, but it’s amazing to have it really start happening. There’s tons to do before August, but we’re thrilled for this new phase of our business!

I’ve been working for months designing new products, and am excited to share this new travel journal!

The covers are made from a vegetable tanned Italian leather and the pages are torn from sheets of Zerkall German Ingres paper. The lightweight pages are great to take on a weekend trip or your next adventure. 

The brass hotel keyring tags are all unique and remind me of the days before hotels used key cards.

They are currently listed as “coming soon” in the shop. I hope to have them for sale by the end of the week.

Take a look here, and let me know what you think!

-Melissa

It’s official. We’re looking to move our little studio out of the house. We’re looking for a studio space or small retail space to rent.

If you know of anything in eastern Massachusetts, we’d love suggestions. Thanks!

I was asked by Craftland to make a piñata for their Cinco de Mayo party that’s coming up. There were very few restrictions, other than that it had to be a functioning piñata. I decided on making a dinosaur, and here he is!

I realize now that it’s going to take a lot of candy to fill this guy up.

There are many layers of crepe paper, so he’ll flutter happily in the wind as it’s smashed to pieces.

He’s ready for the party! If you’d like to take this guy home with you, just stop by the Cinco de Mayo party at Craftland!

-Melissa

I’ll be teaching my next workshop at Wish Studio in Newburyport, MA this Saturday. 

Learn how to make a unique, lightweight journal to store your thoughts, poems, and ideas. This structure is an excellent starting point for beginners. 

This three hour class will teach you basic bookbinding techniques and you will leave with your own handmade journal! 

Click here to sign up for the workshop!

-Melissa

Before I jumped head on into craft fairs, I had no idea there would be show seasons or such a huge up and down flow to business. I was utterly unprepared for all this craziness. 

For us, craft show season picks up from April to June and then again from September to the end of December. When December is over, it’s a huge breath of fresh air. We can relax. We can take a few weeks off from the flurry of traveling to shows, creating as many books as my little hands can make, and planning our meals days ahead of time. 

This year was a bit different though. I found out that I was accepted to CraftBOSTON’s Spring Show, which takes place this week. Not only is it a huge show, but they give you a big booth as well. In the winter, most shows only allow a 6 foot table, meaning that as long as I fill that table up, I’m pretty set. In the case of CraftBOSTON, I have a 10 foot by 10 foot booth. That’s a lot of space and a lot of books.

January and February are usually leisurely and relaxed around here, but boy has it been different this year. First off, we sold out of books at the end of the show season in December. SOLD OUT. This had not happened in years past, so there was a bit of a scramble to make sure I could get enough supplies and create enough books by March. After working many weeks of 15 hour days with only a few weekends off, we’re here. We’re at the home stretch.

I’m so excited and proud of what we’ve accomplished in so little time. We’ve completely rebranded To Boldly Fold. I made more books in January and February than I had made all of last year. Most importantly, we’re ready for CraftBOSTON.

Won’t you come to the show and see what we’ve accomplished? We’d love to celebrate with you!

-Melissa

We always want customers to have a special experience shopping with us. Whether it is online or in person, we want people to feel welcome. We want you to feel and see the work we put into every aspect of our shop. Craft shows can be a mixed bag when it comes to showcasing our work. We never quite know what the space will be like until we get there. There’s usually little control over our lighting and the spot we’re given. That being said, we try to have as much control over our display as we can. We always want you to feel like you’re coming into our world. We want you to feel like you’re popping into a brick and mortar store, rather than a pop up tent with fabric walls. 

These have been some of our goals since the beginning, but our display has changed many times over the past few years. I’m excited to show you a project I’ve been working on. It’s a double sided wood sign to hang outside our booth at craft fairs.

We’re hoping it’ll be eye catching and point you in the direction of our lovely books and paper goods.

We started off with two pieces of wood that we attached together to create a larger board. I then began stenciling out the logo, and then came the hard part. Carving the sign was hard work, but so much fun.

This is the point where I realized just how much I loved the new fonts we had chosen. When you’re carving each letter by hand, you can feel the work that went into designing each and every letter.

It was really exciting to see the first side completed. I took a few days rest before I tacked the backside.

After all the letter and logo carving, we sawed off the corners, and sanded it all down. Now it was ready to paint!

The painting took a couple days.

Slowly but surely I got both sides painted and gilded the edges.

Come by our booth at our next show, and have a look for yourself!

-Melissa