Sketch Upon A Time

If your answer is the 2010 Golden Glow convention, you are correct!

I arrived Tuesday afternoon to Milwaukee. I met one of my favorite artists on the bus to the hotel-Ralph Giguiere. He is also an illustrator and teaches at the Philadelphia college of art. I love the detail and quality of his belsnickle candy containers. It is great to meet the heart and soul behind the pieces.

The hotel is all decked out in red,white, and blue celebrating a patriotic Christmas and 30 years of the golden glow.

After settling in, I took a class in making Christmas card baskets. Using antique Christmas and templates, I button-stitched a few cards together to make an adorable container that I can use at the holidays.

I later did some room hopping and was able to purchase an antique belsnickle from Robert Merck who authored a book called Deck the Halls. It is one of the best books on the market about antique Christmas.

The best part of the convention is seeing your friends, you might not see them in awhile but when you get together it feels like no time has passed.

Until the next sketch!

This is just another test to see if my post works from my iPad to my blog to Twitter to Facebook.

Let’s try again!

Let’s see how this works.

Perhaps the 4th time will work?

Perhaps the third time is a charm?

Let try it again.

Let’s see if this works . . .

It has been awhile since my last post.

2010 has been exciting  year so far and busy. My 2010 ornaments are in production and I am gearing up for  a busy Fall.  Lots of events are planned  and for those of you who subscribe to the Landmark newsletter already know that I will be doing a five city tour- including stops in Tampa, LA, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Chicago, and NYC. Stay tuned for more in upcoming blog posts.

Also  this year,  you will be seeing  a line of stationery in stores that I am launching with a  Louie Award winning company called a la cards.

For all of you that know that I also work in Book Publishing- I am now VP Creative Director of St. Martin’s Paperbacks and  continuing to work on packages for  Emily Giffin, Kristin Hannah, Janet Evanovich, Lisa Scottoline, and others.

I am excited to share that I have  also illustrated  a book on the retelling of the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for New York Times bestselling author Donna Van Liere- who is known for her wonderful book The Christmas shoes. The book is called The Christmas Journey, in stores this fall

As I said, an exciting year for which I feel very lucky.

Looking back on 2009- what a wonderful season it was.   It was so great to see so many of my collectors at my events.  I had the energy to decorate my home withsix trees- photo highlights are posted. As you can see my pugs are always there to help me out…and they are honored with their own tree!

Soon I will be  attending the Golden glow convention in Milwaukee- I hope that I will get to see many of you there.

Until the next sketch!

My Eleventh signing was at Bergdorf Goodman- Posey Pugglesworth made her last personal appearance of the season. It was a great time- I met so many wonderful people and made  new friends with Anne and her niece, Robin  and her La La !

Robin bought the very last  Bergdorf Custom ball – congrats to those  lucky 72 people, that designwill not be out again next year.

My book A Very New York Christmas was selling fast and by the end of the event only a few  ornaments and books were left.

I felt very honored.

Until the next sketch!