Life by Design: Kristen Ley

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Today’s guest interview comes from Kristen Ley, the talented and incredibly hardworking founder and owner of Thimblepress®—a letterpress stationery and gift studio just a couple hours north of Lucky Luxe in Jackson, Mississippi. You’ll probably recognize her Push-Pop Confetti that has swept the world in celebrations of all kinds, or the vibrant, upbeat aesthetic that spans her entire product line. Kristen has become one of the great bouncing boards, friends, and mentors of my work life and I’m excited to share some of her thoughts with y’all today. Welcome, friend!

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Our senior designer, Sauce, says that when you’re an artist or designer professionally, “every choice is a design choice.” Do you see that in your personal life outside of your work?

I do, but I think it is so engrained in me that I don’t even realize it until I have made a decision, picked something out or made a comment. To me, design is in everything. Now that doesn’t mean that it is always great, but that is just the stuff I stay away from! Seriously though, every single thing in this world has a grand design first and foremost created by God. Even the food we eat has been designed by a chef at a restaurant or a food brand at a grocery store.

What would your best day be like?

My best day… Oh, that is hard. I have never been one to even have favorites. I just claimed my first favorite a few years ago with my favorite number. I love options, choices and variety. If I had to dream a large dream, I would be able to pack up my entire Thimblepress® studio, all of our team members, all of the pets, and Family Matters Steve Erkel or Star Trek style transport our offices to a private island. The island would have Fun-Dip powder sand beaches with trees that grew fruit popsicles and homemade beef jerky. Ha ha! Honestly, I love every day at work… even the challenging days that make me want to bang my head on the desk. It is rare that you get to do what you love every single day, and I feel honored God has allowed me to do this!

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Do you make an effort to design your routine and your life around the things and moments that give you joy?

I try to do that. My routine is a routine of non-routine activities. I have a routine of being here in Jackson, Mississippi and working, but every day at Thimblepress® is different and I do tend to do the things that I want to work on the most, first in the day. I know some business people say do what you don’t want to do first and work your way out to the best, but I would rather just have dessert first! The joys in my life are very simple despite my large requests for a candy island with beef jerky trees. I find joy in the fact that I can call my own schedule, bring my dogs to work, create things that make people happy and celebrate the small moments. Those are some small but HUGE joys in my life.

How does your home reflect your life, your history, and your design choices?

My current home is actually at my work. I have a 2,200 square foot studio on the bottom level and a 2,200 square foot studio apartment on the second level. The second level contains my office, our photo studio, Bekah’s office, and our meeting area for Thimblepress® in the front and my apartment area in the back. I am very sentimental. I love the stories of furniture, blankets, knick-knacks, and art in my home. Everything has a story, and I love that. I really try to only keep things around if they make me happy. I used to hold on to everything, but when I held on to everything, the things I really love got lost amongst the mess of the stuff I really didn’t love. Now, my home is filled with only things that make me happy. I love vintage mid-century modern mixed with touches of folk art style, bright color and happy green plants. A lot of what I just described is very much reflected into the products we create at Thimblepress®.

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Every person is a little weird in some way or another, and those weird things are important parts of what give us our personalities. For instance, I collect books with white spines and sleep with my baby blanket, and those objects feel significant to me and to my story. Tell me about a weird thing that’s essential to you.

Oh gosh, well, if you didn’t read the questions above, then I will go ahead and tell you… I am a little whacky—and I own it. It makes who I am, and truly makes living an honest life easier. I have been collecting tacky thimbles from every new place I visit since I was a kid. I have some beautiful thimbles from friends, but most of them are tacky gas station thimbles… And I LOVE them. I also love my animals more than some people may love their children. I act like I can take them everywhere with me, and often call in advance to the location I am wanting to visit and explain that my dogs are more like “human dogs.” Doing that always yields a small chuckle and a resounding “no,” but I have a lot of fun with it.

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Who was one of the first pop or movie celebrities that you admired?

That would have to be Andrew Keegan. I was a huge Tiger Beat reader when I was in the 5th grade. Our group of friends all decided that we were going to like one of the main guys. You know, there was Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Devon Sawa, Andrew Keegan, Rider Strong, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Jonathan Jackson, James Van Der Beek, Ben Savage, Joshua Jackson, and Jared Leto…And I ended up with Andrew Keegan.

How did you answer “What do you want to be when you grow up” when you were in grade school? I have, crazy enough, always said “artist.” I dressed up as an artist when I was five years old for my kindergarten career day. Isn’t that crazy!? I wore an apron and little French beret, and held a palette and paint brush in my hand. 

Thank you so much, Kristen!

You can keep up with Kristen here: website, twitter, instagram, facebook, pinterest

Marriage Mondays: Emily & Bryan Ley

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Today’s Marriage Monday interview comes from a business-lady whom I’ve long admired. Emily Ley‘s planners, stationery and gifts are all over my social media feeds, and rightly so with thousands of fans of her beautifully functional products all over the world.

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I feel a kinship with Emily that might come from our geographical common ground, but I think the sunshiny, positive designs she creates are a big part of that too. To see her work is to know her joyful spirit, and I’m so excited to share she and her husband Bryan’s words of advice and experience with marriage.

Tell me about how you met and how you felt about each other that first day. What eventually happened that made you each believe you would get married some day?

Emily: When I was sixteen, I got my very first job as a hostess at a restaurant in Pensacola. On my first day, I met a super cute, frat boy who drove a red Jeep. I remember thinking he was so funny with a really quick wit. I liked that because he kept me on my toes! I was dating someone else at the time (got engaged, actually) and so was he. Nothing came of it until we were both single a few years later and a mutual friend arranged an impromptu little meet up at a local spot. I remember being so excited putting makeup on and getting ready to leave to meet up with him. For the years that we were acquaintances, I always referred to him as “Bryan Ley,” never just Bryan. And he’d always been “that guy” that I’d always kept my eye on. Somehow the stars aligned and the rest is history.

Bryan: I remember Emily starting at Darryl as a hostess where I had been bar tending my way through college. She was younger than I was and — at that time — 3 years is a big difference. Our actual connection came eight years later when the wife of a college buddy (who happened to know Emily very well) set up the meeting knowing we already knew each other. Long story short…we stayed up and talked the whole night about everything and anything. That began a long-distance relationship. I just remember feeling lucky. She was everything I was looking for. Our relationship moved pretty quick, but I knew I couldn’t let her out of my sights. She was the one.
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Tell me the things that mattered most to you about your wedding day.

Emily: We wanted our wedding to feel like a party (without the pomp and circumstance that can sometimes accompany a large wedding). We wanted a big celebration of a big kind of love in our favorite place with our favorite people. It had a jazzy feel, New Orleans-style. Our colors were black, white, ivory and gold with splashes of fuchsia and green brought in with our flowers. Flowers didn’t matter much to me, but they were actually a highlight of our day. Our reception included a crawfish boil, hot beignets and cafe au lait at midnight. It was joyful, vibrant and full. I’d do it all over again the same way we did it in a heartbeat.

Bryan: I just wanted her to say yes so we could hurry up and get to Jamaica. It was more important for me to know that she was having the day she had always dreamed of more than anything  We both really enjoyed getting friends and family together to celebrate.

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Planning a wedding can be stressful. It’s expensive. Your feelings all become so elevated about the event, and before you realize it’s happened, your relationship and the actual marriage can get put on the back burner almost like a reward for getting through the enormous party. How can a wedding become less about planning a party and more about the new family that’s beginning?

Emily: You know… when I think back on this season of life, I’m so grateful that we knew immediately that the other was “the one.” We didn’t waste any time. We dated long distance for eight months, were engaged for eight months and then married in October, 2008. It was the perfect pace. I kept envisioning us telling our story to our children one day and knew the story I wanted to tell – that our wedding was full of love, full of joy and a memory that EVERYONE cherished – not just me (the bride!) and not just us (the couple!) We didn’t take two hours to take family portraits between the ceremony and reception. We didn’t have a long, drawn out seated dinner. Instead, we made purposeful decisions around the celebration we wanted it to be. THAT is who our family is. We also wove really special details in throughout the day. My favorite special detail was my gift to Bryan. During our time at the restaurant we met at, he would give me the silly toys kids accidentally left on his tables. One of them was an Ernie car (from Sesame Street). He laughed in his flirty way and told me it was a gift for me. I told him he was crazy and pretended to lose it. I actually saved it and gave it to him wrapped in a note before the ceremony. We still have it. 

Bryan: Emily, up until our engagement, had been planning and organizing events on a pretty large scale as part of her career. The stress and heightened emotions only exist because this one day is one of the most important days of your entire life. My best advice would be to hire a wedding planner and take lots of photos.

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How are you involved in each other’s career goals?

Emily: Very. I can honestly say I more than likely would have never started my business without his love, support and encouragement. Bryan works for a large commercial insurance agency in Florida and love his job as well. We’re lucky to have careers we both love.

Bryan: This is a big part of our marriage. Our lives away from work are a big part of our day and who we are. Specific to Emily’s company, I find myself living vicariously through Emily. I think the life of an entrepreneur is one to be admired. I enjoy the part I play as her cheerleader.

What advice would you each give to a newlywed?

Emily: Easy. Marry your best friend. 

Bryan: Enjoy your time together. Do things. Take trips. See the world. In the very near future you will have a 4 year old and newborn twins…and you won’t have time for any of those things!

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Thank you so much, Emily and Bryan! We’ll see you sweet readers here next week for another Marriage Monday interview!

You can keep up with Emily Ley here: Website, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest

Life by Design : Grove Street Press

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While wedding invitations are our bread and butter, that’s not the only work our hearts are married to. As our careers keep evolving, Ben and I find ourselves doing more home and furniture design, which inevitably makes me think of the way we live and how design inspires every aspect of that, too. We wake up every morning with the (oftentimes harrowing) flexibility of self-employment, which affords us the opportunity to design our days and moments together. Every single day I am thankful for that. For me and Ben, having breakfast together, having dinners each night with our friends and family on our porches and then taking a long walk around our neighborhood are the things that give our days structure and joy and we don’t sacrifice them if possible. So, for our newest interview series, Life by Design, I’ve been sitting down with other creatives like us to learn more about how to live a gracious life filled to the brim with the people and moments and things that we love, even if we can never know what each day will bring.

We’re starting this series with Kate Wyman and Anna Boyer, first cousins who own and operate Grove Street Press, their charming letterpress shop on a cobblestoned street in the Warehouse District in New Orleans. Their instagram account is filled with magical vignettes of New Orleans, their pup, Mildred, their beautiful letterpress work and studio, and their preppy-chic style that makes your heart long for a trip down south. As my southern sisters in paper world, I’m excited to make them our first Life by Design guests. Welcome, ladies!

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Our senior designer, Sauce, says that when you’re an artist or designer professionally, “every choice is a design choice.” Do you see that in your personal life outside of your work?

Absolutely!  The cultivation of an artful life is very intentional, but it shouldn’t be forced. It’s hard to trust the authenticity of someone’s taste if it’s not also reflected in a curated home, a purposeful wardrobe, or even thoughtful vocabulary in manners.  It’s all organic, or part of a piece.  Our card designs and choices therein give a glimpse into the people we are. What is often forgotten, though, is that editing is a huge part of design, as it is in writing.  An author wouldn’t send an article for publication without careful editing; so too with other creative endeavors.  Editing helps refine and define choices both in and outside of work.  The choice one makes to edit out elements (e.g. only choosing the single best photograph of your vacation day to post to Instagram, not all 30) often matter more in keeping tastes pure than what is kept.  We edit the decor of our shop and the posts to our Instagram feed, with the hope that people will be drawn into our world and want to participate in our joy by sending one of our cards.  We’re hoping to design and share joie de vivre with our choices!

What would your best day be like?

We believe that every single day should, on a micro scale, have some part of all the things that we want from life— family, friends, prayer, work, study and leisure. Some days are more balanced than others, and some days not all of these things happen, but it’s a goal.  We also regularly talk about how the best days are simple, leisurely, beverage-based days, with small pleasures.  The ideal day would combine all of this:  Coffee on the porch in the morning with home magazines; a walk in Audubon Park with Mildred; heading to the shop to run a new print we’ve been working on for a long time (the first crisp letterpress print of a design we’ve only seen digitally never gets old!);   a light lunch out with iced tea and family that, on some lucky days, might extend into an afternoon coffee while strolling the boutiques on Magazine Street;  a return to the shop to package orders with an Old Fashioned to-go (thats a thing in nola!) ; and finally, an al fresco dinner at home with friends with wine and good chats.  Come to think of it, our best day may need to be longer than 24 hours…

Do you make an effort to design your routine and your life around the things and moments that give you joy? 

Our effort is less focused on seeking out the joy, and more focused on realizing that joy is a choice, and opting to choose / infuse joy even into small things:  errands or tasks around the shop.  Of course, we try to surround ourselves with joyful things — our collections, friends, etc (all of those varied design choices!) —  and intersperse levity into the day — teaching Mildred tricks, taking a break to arrange an Instagram, etc — but we also believe that true joy comes from within, and consciously try ourselves to be moments of joy for the people that come into our shop.

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Who was one of the first pop or movie celebrities that you admired?

Princess Diana — both in her personality and her style! 

Every person is a little weird in some way or another, and those weird things are important parts of what give us our personalities. For instance, I collect books with white spines and sleep with my baby blanket, and those objects feel significant to me and to my story. Tell me about a weird thing that’s essential to you.

Both of us never leave the house without a stack of bangles on, no matter if we’re wearing shorts or going to a cocktail party.

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We rarely wear necklaces, and rarely wear just a single bracelet — always a stack!  We even briefly considered running a blog called ‘Wrist Watch,’  where we’d take street fashion – type photos of people’s arm parties.  We often spend as much time deciding which bracelets we’ll wear for a photograph as we do an outfit! We also have a nickname for everyone.  It may be a Southern thing, but our family was a nicknaming family, and we’ve continued the tradition.  I can’t remember the last time our mothers called either of us by our given names.  After a few meetings with new folks, we also have a hard time calling someone by their proper name.  

Thank you so much, Kate and Anna! We’ll see you sweet readers here next week for another Life by Design interview!

You can keep up with Grove Street Press here: Website, Facebook, and Pinterest

Marriage Mondays: Erin Austen Abbott

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Today I’m excited to tell you we are launching a weekly interview series called Marriage Mondays where we’ll be chatting with some of our favorite creative people about their own weddings and marriages (which are two very different things). My hope is that these questions and answers will open the door for honest conversation with our engaged readers who are in the overwhelming midst of wedding planning. Marriage begins after the wedding, and truly—that’s the best part. The wedding invitation is the first page of a new family’s story, and we’d like to invite you good folks to let your thoughts wander to those sweet chapters of life.

Our very first post comes to you from Erin Austen Abbott, wife of Sean Kirkpatrick, mama to Tom Otis, owner of Amelia, fellow Mississippi artist, and all-around darling of the creative movement happening in our state (which you may have read about in the New York Times). Her shop on the Oxford square holds so many lovely treasures, from pretty paper to fancy bath products, and as a new friend, I’m excited that she’s leading the way on our interview series. So, let’s get started!

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Tell me about how you met and how you felt about each other that first day. What eventually happened that made you each believe you would get married some day?

Sean and I have a long story about how we met… I’ll give you the short version. I was sitting in a coffee shop in Oxford one day, and he walked in. I, without a doubt, knew the moment I saw him, he was who I was going to marry. We never spoke nor made eye contact. My heart just knew. I didn’t meet him until eight months later, in San Francisco. The first encounter was like slicing butter. You could feel the chemistry. We didn’t meet again for six months, this time in Los Angeles. After that night, we talked on the phone everyday, as we were apart the first four months. We knew we were going to marry because it was like nothing either of us had felt before. We were okay when we had to be apart. We could still follow our own creative path and the relationship was going to be fine. Independence within the relationship has always been so healthy for us. 

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 Tell me the things that mattered most to you about your wedding day.

We wanted a very small wedding. One where we could be with all of our guests, talk to them, so we had a small church wedding and dinner of about 25 people, then ten days later, we threw a big party for our friends and family to attend.

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 Planning a wedding can be stressful. It’s expensive. Your feelings all become so elevated about the event, and before you realize it’s happened, your relationship and the actual marriage can get put on the back burner almost like a reward for getting through the enormous party. How can a wedding become less about planning a party and more about the new family that’s beginning?

Something that we thought about doing, after the fact of course, was to just elope then go on a long trip, traveling around to family and out-of-town friends, making introductions and meeting those near and dear to the other. It would have been a fun adventure and a great honeymoon. Planning a wedding is stressful and making sure you don’t hurt someone’s feelings is really hard to avoid. We thought the idea of travel would have really introduced us as a new family to all of our friends and family. And we could have sent out a really fun invitation suite to show everyone where we were traveling to. 

 How do you each envision your marriage 10 years from now?

Sean is a musician, so I hope that he’s where he wants to be in his career by then and myself in mine, with my writing and the shop. I see us continuing to support each other in our chosen creative fields, doing a lot of traveling together, with our son, Tom Otis. I want us to see the world. We don’t need stuff, just want to come home to a comfortable, loving home. 

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What advice would you give to a newlywed?

The first year is the hardest, so don’t feel like you made the wrong decision. Start a savings account and add to it yearly. The single most important thing in a marriage is to communicate. Always tell the other what’s going on, because letting it build up is never a good idea. You aren’t a mind reader and neither is your partner. Come at problems in an adult, calm way and you can avoid saying something you might regret. Also, have fun!!! Marriage is fun! You get to spend everyday with your best friend. It’s awesome. 

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Thank you so much, Erin! We’ll see you sweet readers here next week for another Marriage Monday interview!

You can keep up with Erin Austen Abbott here: Website, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest

 

OSBP Designer Rolodex

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Since we started making invitations way back in 2009, Nole of Oh So Beautiful Paper has been one of our very biggest supporters and promoters. When she introduced the Designer Rolodex, we were one of the first shops to join and I’m so thankful for the continued support she’s shown us over the years. I can say with 100% certainty she’s one of those people in our story who made it possible to do this as a full-time career. Today she did her weekly installment of ‘Meet the Rolodex’ on her instagram and it was our turn, with 4 posts all about our work and our shop, and we made so many new friends because of it. What an enormous blessing it is to have people who lift us up and make our dreams possible.

Goodness. Thank you, Nole!