The New York International Gift Fair, NYIGF 2009

It's all done, we've finally finished all the new designs for the NY Gift Show this coming Sunday, the 25th.

We are all exhausted and ready for a good night's sleep. Check in this week to see a sneak peak of what we're launching at the show. All new products will hit retail stores in February. In the meantime, check out our favs at www.9spotmonk.com.

NYIGF
Pier 92, Studio Division
Booth 30008
Jan 25 through 29, 2009
9am to 6pm, the last day will be to 12:00 pm

- Katie, Studio

My favorite recycled journals

I think my all time favorite journals would have to be these Animal and Friends sketch books. They are just so cute and each one has a thought bubble for my name. The boss lady gave me a set for Christmas and I was just elated. I name each sketch a category to keep my scribbles and thoughts a bit neater than college days.

-- Katie, Studio Manager

The studio moves! Well, sort of...

What could be a better time than right before our first trade show of the year to start relocating our work studio? We've all been thinking about this for a long time and the wish list gets longer and longer. Who sits where, who gets the window seat, who's feng shui will be better if s/he's computer is... the list goes on.

After ranting about this for about a year. We're doing it. I made the first move. Now normally, the process would be to:

1. empty the space

2. tear out walls, floors and ceilings and replace

3. paint

4. draw up a 'what goes where' floor plan

5. beg and borrow furniture from friends and family (or get our very talented illustrator turned metal worker to make all our tables)

6. move in

But that would be a little too easy and time consuming so, we're doing it in this order:

1. move everything in the existing space to the corner of the room 

2. clean and vacuum the floors

3. pick my lovely feng shui'd corner and move in... I'll let everyone fight for their respective spaces on Monday

4. finish trade show

5. and start tearing down ceilings, walls and floors!

It's late, we're all tired...

So what better to do than create our first ever blog?