Hello all! We’re still working away busily in the studio, but we’ve been (and will probably continue to be) pretty quiet about blogging ~ we’re cutting down as much as possible on the time we spend on the computer. 

In the meantime, we’re continuing to churn out orders over at our store, and the upcoming summer collection is taking shape. We’ll have more news about that soon! 

If you’d like to stay updated with the happenings over here at Five and a Half, sign up for our newsletter (scroll to the bottom) and we’ll let you know what we’re up to. Thanks!

I was fiddling around with some photoshop stuff (well, actually learning how to use it) and couldn’t resist matching the words (okay who doesn’t already own at least one version of this poster? We have a hand-drawn repro by Maira Kalman in the living room that I stare at every day) with these roosters we saw just hanging out on a lazy sunny afternoon (p.s. not in Brooklyn). 

Last weekend, a trip back in time to the Saugerties Lighthouse. A lovely Sunday of beautiful sights, new friends, and the most delicious buckwheat pancakes.

We saw this great fence when we were driving around upstate New York. Love it! Elsewhere: bookplates, Meet Your Printmaker, and I’m adding Alphabet City to my wishlist.

Because we (like most other people) love looking at vintage things, we couldn’t resist rolling up our sleeves, digging through some really dusty books for ideas, and adding some old school flair to the shop.

Here are the results: three very skinny exercise booklets, each filled with 25 blank pages of sugarcane paper. The pastel paper covers are printed with our original designs pairing vintage images with sage quotes from The Science of Culture (a stuffy book on etiquette from1923). Each set comes wrapped in a recycled kraft paper package. Available now in our store.

Working on these new designs yesterday afternoon was a really welcome break from the big three-(now four)-month-long project I’m still up to my shoulders in. Somewhere in the midst of this, we are also working on the spring/summer collection of our signature photo-cover journals. Please do continue to check back in during the coming months to see what new things we are adding to Five and a Half!

This morning I read an article in The New York Times about a hundred-and-one year old lady who started painting when she was sixty years old using a paint-by-numbers set her husband gave her. Coincidentally, a couple hours later when I was on the computer, I came across Something’s Hiding in Here’s new work, states, that uses old paint-by-numbers sets. And from some random googling because I was looking for a completely unrelated reference image, I came upon an old post at Drawn, about a paint-by-numbers charity auction at the Corey Helford Gallery (click on past shows, “Charity by Numbers”). Oooh. Very nice.

in Brooklyn are like the Empire State Building is to Manhattan. A bit cheesey, a bit of a cliche, but they always make a nice picture.

For those in New York, this Sunday is the opening of the Brooklyn Flea. We’d be there looking around at everything but we’ll be at a weekend getaway in an upstate New York lighthouse. Anyhow, this is not your typical flea market ~ with vendors including Greenjeans and a whole slew of designers  from Supermarket, I don’t really get what’s even flea-markety about it. So if you attend, don’t expect to be rummaging through the remains of some great-grandmother’s attic, but do expect to buy some really great craft and design pieces (most of them useful of course), and treat yourself to some cupcakes and other delicious baked goods.

Here are the event details: 10am to 5pm—rain or shine—starting April 6, 2008, at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Lafayette Ave. between Clermont and Vanderbilt Ave. It’s on every Sunday through the spring and summer, so if you’re around, stop by!

And for all you people near Oakland, Shawn wants to say he’d be at this print sale buying things if we weren’t on the other side of the country. Prints by The Small Stakes and Bloom Screen Printing, and talk about affordable art, each piece ranges between a whopping $5 to a wallet-friendly $25. It’s on this Friday night, April 4th, From 5:00 - 10:00. Bloom Screen Printing,2310 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA 94612.

Lots of things to see: the third issue of Design for Mankind’s e-zine Inspiration (filled with gorgeous studio shots), we picked up The Acme Novelty Date Book Volume One over the weekend and I couldn’t stop looking at it, and there are so many mouth-watering sketchbook excerpts over at Book by It’s Cover.

even when they’re almost thirty. And of course he paints it blue.

Oh and check out Shawn’s new apron. We like! Made from a real vintage flour sack, you can get your own one here.

I’ve had this glass jar sitting on my shelf since December. I set it up for the DWR Modernmart event back then and had it on my table for passerbys. What’s inside? Little paper fortunes, pieces of wisdom, well wishes. Whoever stuck their hand in the jar pulled out a nice saying, and a few lucky people ended up with a gift bag filled with Five and a Half goodies to take home.

I’d like to reenact the jar of wishes online, for all you who couldn’t be there to draw from the real jar of wisdom.  Only this time, it requires a bit of participation on your end. And yes, there are gift bags involved!

Interested? Here’s what to do:

Write in the comments section of this post your own original well-wish or piece of wisdom. (Include your name, e-mail and website.)

From the submissions we get, we’ll choose our favorite 3,  who will each receive a Five and a Half journal. Also, Shawn will hand-letter those 3 sayings into notecards (with each credited to its author of course) which will be printed and mailed to all of you who participate (we’ll ask for all your mailing addresses when the cards are ready, don’t put your mailing addy in the comments section for the world to see!).

To get you started, here are a few of the pieces of wisdom and well wishes that we had in the jar of wisdom (I was in such a hurry I didn’t think of any of my own):

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” ~Mark Twain

“If life seems to have more questions than answers, try to be the one who asks the questions.” ~Lucy as Madame Fullcharge, Peanuts

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.” ~Yoda, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Remember, these examples are by other people. We’d like to hear your own original sayings, created by you.

Okay, now it’s your turn!

{Update, April 22nd, 2008: Thanks for writing in with your quotes! We’ve picked our favorite three and are making them into notecards to send to the first 22 of you who wrote in with your original sayings. We’ll post pics of the notecards online soon!}