So Hot at ICE

Saturday proved to be about the hottest it could possibly be in June. The peak temp ended up in the mid-90's, and it was at least 85 when we started setting up at 8:45 am. ICE? Yes please!
Amazingly, despite the extreme heat, the off-ramp closures on 75/85 and the fact that Highlands Summerfest was the same weekend, we had a decent turnout! Many people braved the heat to shop the amazing vendors that participated. I was even able to take a small break and get a few things... a snappy new dog collar from The Mod Dog (which is a black and white hounds tooth pattern for my hound to wear. Ha!) and some adorable little bunnies from our tent-mate Brooke from TeddyLux.
We at Jinky Wink unveiled some new products: funky postcards, cute toddler tees, tea towels and some fun file folders. Everything will be available for purchase online super soon. Don't miss out! Sign up for our mailing list to be in the know.

The one unfortunate thing about working an event like this is that you don't get a whole lot of time to check out the other vendors, which we love to do. For a complete list of everyone that attended, click here. I know we'll be going back and seeing what we missed!
Cheers!
Tamara

It's Almost Summer...

...and while we may be slacking on the blog side of things, we are certainly not slacking elsewhere! The Indie Craft Experience is just weeks away, and we are working our tails off to make sure we have plenty of goods for all you awesome people that will be there. We are certain it will be a perfect, sunny day, so be sure to stop by and say hi!
In other insider news... brides, listen up! We have been in the planning stages of wedding invites for quite some time now, and we can't wait to unveil (Ha! No pun intended) them to you! Stay tuned... we'll keep you updated on our process. Of course, if you can't wait and need something now, we're always thrilled to work with people on custom designs!
Hopefully we'll see many of you at ICE on June 7! Until then...
Cheers!
Tamara & Ellen

Come Meet the JW Girls!

We have our first event of the season. Saturday, May 3 we'll be at the SketchWorks Art Mart from 11am til 5pm. Stop by, say hi, and check out our goods live and in person! Locale:
Sketchworks
3041 North Decatur Rd,
Decatur, GA 30079
(North Decatur Rd. between DeKalb Industrial and E. Ponce)
Hope to see you there!
Ellen & Tamara

Ice Ice, Baby!

It's amazing how Vanilla Ice can still be relevant today. Okay, perhaps not, but it's a good intro to say:
We're going to be a vendor at ICE Atlanta this summer!
We recently received news that we were accepted along with our tent-mate TeddyLux for the June 7th event at Centennial Park. Be sure to come out and meet us and enjoy a day of fun, sun and great vendors.
Cheers!
Tamara & Ellen

More Gocco

In order to get some more practice with the Gocco, I decided to design some Invitations and Thank Yous for my daughter’s first birthday. With my husband's help we were quickly able to produce some wonderful new creations. Here we are inking the screen:

After creating all the invites, we then proceeded to make the Thank Yous. We did this by using the same screen with some paper taped over the area we did not want printed:

Here are the cards drying:

And the finished product:

This whole process has been a lot of fun and I am so excited to create even more things with it. Can’t wait to start the next project!

-Ellen

Loco for Gocco!

It's been a while since our last post... but believe us, we've been busy! After months of playing around with our new Gocco, yesterday marked our first official project. For those who don't know what Gocco is, it's basically a way to silkscreen, all contained in a little machine. Check out our step by step from beginning to end!

Ellen is creating the screen. Two toxic (seriously!) lightbulbs go off and your screen is burned from a printout of your work.

The screen after it has been burned (the printout is still attached to the screen).

Using weird foamy strips, you can divide your screen for multiple colors.
On this pass we used two: red and gold.

Then you apply the ink.

We used two screens for this project, one for the top, and a second for the bottom. Here, the top portion is drying before we ink the bottom.

The finished product!

We are very excited with how this turned out, and can't wait for more projects to use with Gocco.
Insider info: We're currently working on custom wedding invites!
Cheers!
Tamara & Ellen

"Make it Work!"

Who doesn't love Tim Gunn? Inspired yet again by Project Runway, and the fact that I have a sewing machine sitting in the closet screaming to be used, I finally busted it out to see what I can do.
Sadly, the answer is not a whole lot, but I learned many lessons last Sunday. I learned that sometimes you need to make sure that everything is in place before you begin sewing, or the stitches aren't quite right. I learned that even when you think the machine is threaded correctly, sometimes it's not. And it's still not. And still... not. I also learned that machines don't care if your finger is in the way. Ouch. But I also learned that paper is much easier to sew than fabric. This was a wonderful discovery since that will probably be our first venture! So while it's likely I won't be on next season of Project Runway, it's highly likely that you'll begin seeing some sewn paper on our products very soon. I'll continue to practice, and the final result will be beautiful!
Cheers!
Tamara

Attention Atlanta!

We've had many inquires as to where you can buy our products around town. We're happy to say that Jinky Wink is now available at Liv's Clothing and Accessories on Roswell Road! Stop by and check it out - very cute stuff and a super friendly staff.
Liv's Clothing and Accessories
3794 Roswell Rd • Suite 27
Atlanta, GA 30342
678.799.7963

Grazie.

We are very happy to announce we are officially part of the Familia - otherwise known as the Atlanta Craft Mafia. Are you scared? Don't be. It's a great group of creative people like us which we are hoping to learn a lot from and also get to attend some cool events! More to come on this... stay tuned!

Invitations!

We are so excited to finally have our invitations ready. This was something we were working towards late last summer, and finally were able to get everything purchased and created! If you haven't seen them yet, here's a peek:


Seriously... how cute are those?! You know you want to have a party now, so go ahead, click over and get you some!

Atlanta Craft Mafia

Saturday I attended a Meet & Greet for the new Atlanta Craft Mafia at Parkgrounds in Reynoldstown. All The Ladies were very friendly and it seems like they have a lot of great ideas in mind for the upcoming year. And lucky for me, we were able to make some lovely Valentines... I was more than a little frightened of the mounds of fabric, thread, buttons and other accessories, and rightfully so. Check out this sad little heart I created...
Yipes. But we did get a bag of goodies with some fun stuff that made up for my lack of fabric-creation abilities...
I think the two things I like best are the cute little hair clip from talulah B (vintage buttons, and a retro silo? Perfection) and the fabric and tee from SustainGroup.org. The fabric may very well end up being my first sewing venture with my new machine. Yes, it's still sitting in the closet, and yes, I still plan on trying to figure it out!
In any event, I met some great people whom I hope to see at future events, so I hope that our application is approved and we can become official members of this funky group!
-Tamara

You're Invited....

...or at least you will be soon! We're working on new invites (finally!) that should be ready for you guys mid-February. Check out this hot paper they're going to be on:Our good friends over at French Papers (okay, they're not "friends" but I did get an email from Jerry himself one time!) have this killer line of Mod-Tone papers that are oh-so retro. We're pairing this paper with some earthy kraft envelopes (100% recycled - 20% post consumer).
As always, you'll get the email announcement when everything is ready!
Cheers!

Ban Comic Sans

Hate Comic Sans? Well, you're not alone. There is a whole website dedicated to hating this lame font. I stumbled across bancomicsans.com today, and they have tees, stickers and stats on the evil that is Comic Sans. Good stuff. I think I love the pink girly tee... might need to pick one up.

Hotlanta gets SNOW?

Yes, it's true... for the second time this week, it's Winter Storm Watch 2008! If you can believe it, the snow is coming down again today. There was high anticipation of everything closing down on Thursday – work included – unfortunately, there wasn't enough snow/ice for that. Here is a pic from Wednesday evening.

Today, however, it has been sleeting and snowing since about 9am, and the grass is actually white. Took the dog for a walk, and this is what it looked like around 11:30.

It's quite a novelty here when it snows... we're afraid to go to the grocery store for fear there will be nothing left. My husband and I (as well as Ellen) are all from the north, so this very humorous to us. The entire city is convinced they will be out of power and snowed into their homes for days and days. Meanwhile, we're going to make reservations to dine out this evening!
Wish us luck in our Winter Wonderland...
Tamara

Bad Design...

While checking out HOW magazine online today, I came across this great post on their blog... downloads from Design Police of bad design stickers! Hilarious. I think that every designer needs these to make notes on bad designs they see! Something for just about every scenario... check out the image to the left for a small sample. Great job Design Police... may you make this world better looking, one design at a time.

2008 Will be Great!

So... as we mentioned before, we had our first annual planning meeting a couple weeks ago. It was a lovely, warm Sunday in Atlanta, and we plopped down on some couches at Aprés Diem for some coffee, snacks and planning – determined to make this business work! These are the '08 Goals:
Attend a minimum of two craft/art shows.
Looking at Indie Craft Experience and some other random ones around town. We'd love to do Summerfest or something, but most of those are more "fine art" versus just selling cool stuff you make. Having a hard time finding a good list of ones to attend that are appropriate to what we do, so if you have suggestions, please pass them on!
Expand our exposure to a national level...
through online advertising, joining online communities, blogging more, and doing some PR with industry magazines – both graphic design and craft/stationery.
Create a Design Studio.
Since we both already do freelance on our own, we are hoping to combine efforts and start Jinky Wink Design Studio. It will be above and beyond the custom work that we currently do – less cards and invites, and more brochures and posters. We'll expand our website to include our portfolios and info on how to hire us!
Get into a minimum of three retail stores.
We had this as a "goal" last year, but we're for real serious about it now! We really want and need the exposure from retail outlets. If you want to see us in your favorite store, go tell them! If you get us into a store, we'll send you a "Thanks for Getting us into a Retail Store" Gift!
Introduce new products.
We're always coming up with great ideas, and we're hoping to be able to roll lots of them out this year! Of course, cash is always a factor, so we do need to think things through. We're hoping to have a few new things as soon as next month. As always, we'll send out an announcement. Get on our mailing list if you're not already!
So, that's our list. It seems small, but everyday we come up with more things that need to happen to make the goal happen! Our ultimate goal throughout the year is to have enough product (and cash!) to make it to a trade show in 2009. Ideally, the National Stationery Show however, we'd be happy with the Gift Mart in Atlanta!
WHEW! Wish us luck...
Tamara & Ellen

Motivation

Just have to say, we've been compiling ideas and thoughts and we're bursting with stuff we want to do in '08! We're hoping to show everyone a sneak peek of things soon – once we figure out what will and won't work. The plan is to have some crafty things, new cards, and things that will hopefully involve the new sewing machine I got for Christmas (thanks mom!). I'm a tad bit scared of the whole sewing thing, but I promised myself I'd figure out how to use it.
If you have an idea of something that you'd like us to create, let us know! We'll put it into our giant idea pot and see if it comes to fruition...

Hey Ya'll!

Hooray! More press for us! And not just a blurb this time... a real live article. We're big time now ya'll!

Ellen had the opportunity to talk with Piedmont Review (for you non-ATL people, it's a local mag) a bit ago, and we're in the Winter issue that's hitting stands now. We are so excited to be featured and see our mugs in a mag. Actually... that part is a little weird... all I have to say is glad we know Photoshop! Anyway, if you would like to see the article a little bigger so you can actually read more about us (because we really are that fascinating), click here or rush out and find a Piedmont Review of your own!
In other news, we had our "Annual" (aka, our first real) Yearly Planning Meeting on Sunday. Check back soon to see our goals for '08. Once it's on the web there's no taking it back, right? Okay, there is, but we'll use it as motivation anyway.
Cheers!
Tamara

2007: A Year in Review (a.k.a. Lessons We Have Learned)

With 2007 a whole day behind us, the lovely girls of Jinky Wink have been reflecting. Reflecting on clients gained, and monies lost -- ideas sparked and projects extinguished -- and all the ups and downs of our first year of this little business venture. We'd like to share with you, our loyal readers (all two of you) the lessons we have learned in Oh-Seven.
1) Starting a business is hard.
2) Keeping it running is way harder.
3) Money does not, in fact, grow on trees.
4) You think you know what you need to know, but you don't know anything until it's too late.
5) Never, ever include shipping in your estimate! (Read: paper is heavy)
6) Bartering for ads: will the loss of profit be worth it?
7) Tons of visits to your website are great, but visits that turn into sales are what you really want.
8) Sometimes, random last minute decisions are good ones. (www.thesampler.com)
9) Late November and early December will be busy.
10) Getting product into brick & mortar stores requires a secret password or handshake. (If anyone knows what this is, please send an email to info@jinkywink.com.)
Thankfully, when you love what you are doing, the ups outweigh the downs. We've learned from our mistakes, and are looking forward to a great 2008!
Cheers and Happy New Year!
Tamara & Ellen