For the Love

Textile...the mere words sends chills of joy down my spine!!! I really never had a chance at not being madly in love with textile. As a toddler my mother worked part-time at a fabric store and growing up her exuberance for the texture, color, pattern, and sensation of fabric are among my earliest memories. Now, my passion has given birth to my business. While shopping at Ikea with my mother-in-law I came across this treasure of a book, Love for Texiles and as a special treat, she purchased it for me. I have spent the past two weeks pouring over it and falling even more hopelessly in love with textiles and photography.

 The photography is beautiful; sun bathed, wistful, and romantic. Here is an example...

 There are simple DIYs that involve little or no sewing and would be a perfect addition to update a room or home! They are truly delightful. Quotes are mixed in and the entire effect of photography, fabrics, design, projects, and ideas are so inspiring! For $7.95, this might just be a perfect Christmas gift for someone special. Here is my favorite picture and quote in the book. I love the moment it captures and quote sums up my life...

"A real dream life should be full of love and laughter, tenderness and sunshine, homemade food and plenty of textiles. Patterns that shout or whisper, colors that grab or just touch. Soft fabrics that bring out the best in us."

New Line Sneak Peek

Yikes, two days of shopping put me two days behind on my promise the share this sneak peek with you! When will I ever learn?!
Without further adieu, here are the four fabric combinations that I am working on at present and will be available for purchase the beginning of 2013!!!

I am very excited to get these finished, photographed, and up for sale!

Business is in the Bag

Good Tuesday afternoon to you all!
We are safely in Seattle for a time and have been sending prayers and our love to NY and the east coast through the hurricane.
Devin is doing a few rotations in the Seattle area for med school, so I get a vacation from work and a chance to get caught up with all the JJTulum stuff that I have been pushing aside for the last few months...Eeeekkkk! Daily blog posts and some new DIYs and recipes is also in the plan. I will be working hard to start and finish the next line of bags we have coming out the beginning of next year! Packing an entire business across the country was no easy task.

A large duffel, a little creative packing, 62 pounds, and a fiasco of crazy repacking at the airport later we have JJTulum in Seattle and now the real work begins. Tune back tomorrow as I will be giving a sneak peek at four fabric combos that will be ready in January!!!

An A-mason-ing Chandelier

I recently went on a search for the perfect lighting piece to hang over my work table in the JJTulum studio. I could not find anything perfect so I commissioned my ever-clever husband to dream up something pretty and creative with a set of Mason Jars my mama gave me on my last trip home. Sure enough, he turned it into a masterpiece!!!
I was going to turn this into a DIY but with all of the electrical components I did not want to be responsible for anyone burning their house down so I will just show you a few of the steps and feel free to contact us if you want some more info...
As reclaimed wood was pathetically expensive we purchased pine boards from Home Depot and then took out all of our pent up frustration and stress on the them with hammers, a bag of screws, heavy chunks of wood, and anything else that would make intricate markings. One technique we found looked great was to place the head of a nail on the wood and hit the point with a hammer, then turn it around and drive the tip of the nail into the wood and pull it out again, giving it the look of old nails having been used before. Here's how it looked:

We used a wood plane and shaved off long strips of wood on the corners, using varying amounts of pressure to give it an uneven look. After sanding each board down we applied two different oil-based wood stains to give color texture and bring out the markings in the wood.

Our studio has taken on a bit of a country-shabby-chic-industrial feel...haha...how is that for combining styles. So being, leg bolts were a perfect industrial touch for the piece. Look how the stain made the nail holes look old too...

It was a very fun project to help with and the end product is even more than I imagined it would be! Take a look:

The radio bulbs give off such a warm light and while I teetered between spending the extra on funky bulbs or just using regular light bulbs, in the end they were totally worth it!

Business Card Delight

Today my business cards were delivered and I could not be happier with the end result! I am such a tactile shopper...I like to touch and feel things before purchasing, Devin, on the other hand is a die-hard online shopper and at times our worlds collide. He is a wonderful review finder, and always orders products that are superb, but each time it come with a tid-bit of anxiety on my part!We decided on a company, All Business Cards, and were thrilled! They are sharp, not pixelated, and very professional! They came within a few days too which was an added bonus. Here they are...

 

They are the heavy weight, UV coated, high-gloss option

We will be including them in each order from now on and if you want any to pass around please let us know...we have 1000 of them and they are just itching to get out of the box! Have a happy Thursday night all!

We're OPEN!!!

Hello All!!! We are so excited to announce that the JJ Tulúm website is now OPEN FOR BUSINESS!!! Here is a peek at the homepage, but go check it out and let us know what you think!!!Thanks for everything!!!! Can you tell I am SO excited???!!! Have a great day!!!

Click the picture to go to jjtulum.com and browse or maybe shop?!

Ready, Set, GO!

What a rewarding few weeks this has been. So stressful at times, but tonight I would say it was all worth it! My website is finally opening today at 10 o'clock a.m. EST sharp!!!!!! There are so many emotions in our home this evening and as I told Devin, "If I were not so desperately tired I would really like to shed a tear of joy!" Today we finalized every last detail and then slid each item into a plastic sleeve, stickered the back, and now they are all ready to mail in the days and weeks to come!

It is past 2:00a.m. and I am going to call it a night and get some much needed sleep before tomorrow's big day! So excited...zzzzzzzzzzzz...

Freezing Fotos

Good Evening! Today we had a very successful, but frigid adventure. While finalizing the website this week we realized we were a few photos short and so headed out today into the New York winter for the last couple snaps! In they end they turned out great, however, the "model" was having trouble looking warm and natural. I tried warming up my face and relaxing my facial muscles but got caught in the act! Thought I would share a few of the not-so-polished moments of today. The final product you can see on our website SOON!
Have a great evening!

Lights, Camera....DONE!

Whew, this has been one busy weekend... well, week actually. But we are very happy to announce that all of the pictures for the website have been taken, cropped, edited, and uploaded! Just a few tests that need to occur and the website will be...finally...LIVE! We hope you all look at the pictures and say, "Wow, they must have had these taken in some fancy New York City studio with a team of creative designers, expensive lighting, and a professional photographer." Here is how it really went down...

My living room "studio"



The BAGS' view this week (Yes, those are still stockings hanging on the wall...yikes!)



The many hours of lint rolling, pressing, fluffing, and beautifying!

Devin and I jumped in front of the lights for a celebratory hoorah! Our Kitty even got into the action!

We are so very excited to be so close to sharing all of our work with you! Thank you for your patience and encouragement...the final thing is just around the corner!!!
 

Down to Business

With the holidays behind us my husband and I decided it was time to knuckle down and get to work again. We have spend every waking moment on JJTulum's website for the past year now and were approaching burn-out. The break to be with family and friends gave us the "umf" and excitement to finish this process as energetically as we started! We have updated the website's page saver to give you sneak peak at the feel and look of the website! Although a smig behind schedule we are rapidly approaching the finish line...or would that be the starting line? Either way the website is almost ready and we are so excited to share it with you soon! Thanks for all the love and support! Here is a screen shot of the website page saver to save a click if you would prefer.

My "Present" Project

I took a brief pause from working fervently on the JJ Tulum website to complete an order for a very special client. She ordered eight bags in four varying fabric combos as Christmas presents. The bag style that she selected will be featured in a JJ Tulum collection next year, so I thought I would give you a sneak peek! It is a simple all-purpose tote with no internal pockets and resembles a reusable grocery bag with the customary "over-the-topness" of JJ Tulum. There is one pocket on the outside that is perfect for grocery lists, wallets, cell phones, bottles, etc and the best part is that the entire bag folds into that same pocket for ease of storage, packing, and gift wrapping. Here are the four fabric combos I came up with for her:

 

 Here is how you fold the bag into the pocket:

I am excited to add these to our collection in the future and have been trialing them with some family and friends. So far I have received wonderful feedback. People have used them for so many fun adventures: sporting events, trips to the beach, packing into a suitcase for vacation, grocery shopping, and the list goes on!

Successful Failure

Last day of my “vacation” from work and still so much to do! My bag challenge was close, but I did not make it! =( I worked hard last week but ran into some obstacles and have not had a chance to put in more time yet this week. I’ll keep you posted on when I finally have to finish that set up.

This past week has been full of victories and losses.  I have my business license so we are official and ready to go (whew!), we made some wonderful headway on the website (finally…yikes!), I lost my childhood kitty (I had no idea how hard I would take this…it has been rough!), my baby brother has his driver’s license (SO PROUD... but watch out!), and tragically my poor little iron pooped out (this is not good timing!). Needless-to-say there is never a still moment around here! On to iron researching! Any suggestions?

Overextension

My husband is constantly saying that I overextend myself and looking around at all the projects I have going simultaneously, I sheepishly have to admit he is right! Unfortunately this means that I am chronically playing catch-up to finish things on time; like launching a website and fall product line. Sigh…although it does not look like much now the photo today is of all the pieces for TWELVE bags to be included in this upcoming line. The goal: to finish them by this coming Friday. I have never been able to accomplish this amount of work in such a short time, so wish me luck and tune in soon to see if I can pull it off!