Remember yesterday when I said I’d have a gift guide for you? Well never fear, that day has come. Unsolicited gift guides are a longstanding blogger rite of passage. Due to the nature of our fun year, I’ve decided to share gift guides in six different categories, highlighting some of my favorite small businesses that are doing amazing things. It’s very hard to navigate the holiday shopping noise so I hope I can introduce you to some fun shopping ideas, not only during our generic winter holiday season but all year-round.

My Holiday Shopping Must-Haves

My go-to candle provider is Kismet + Charisma all year-round. It has been so difficult to find a soy candle company locally that provides scents that appeal to me. My friend and co-producer Charisma has done just that. I am not just saying this to be nice, these are actually really good candles. They just as long as my favorite bigger box candle company which is a big deal for me, as someone who has candles going all of the time. She will be sharing her winter/holiday collection very soon but I wanted you to bookmark the shop and come back to check this out.

Unfortunately, this is a Central Florida-local thing, but my dear friend Kim of Chaos Bagels makes the very best bagels I’ve had in this state. I am not a bagel-snob by any means but I have had bad bagels here. If you have friends in the Central Florida area, do them a favor and order these bagels for the holidays. I gifted my husband bagels for his birthday which is how wonderful they are. Also, who better to trust with your bagel providing than a mom of three boys?

Quarantine Holiday Gift Guide

2020 gave us a unique perspective on living indoors for prolonged lengths of time. Now that we’re heading into cooler weather that is typically a tricky time for many people health-wise, we are extra-vigilant on keeping our outdoor time to a minimum during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are some fun things to keep you occupied while you make the best of your physical distance winter season.

1. Snack + Go Organic Cotton Tote by Project Pop | 2. Blue Dottie Adult Face Mask by Sarah Hearts | 3. Save The Post Office card by Creative Future Studio

4. The Sampler Kit by Haus | 5. In Therapy and Thriving Greeting Card by Curated Dry Goods | 6. Postal Service Crew Neck Tee From Natalie Reales Designs

Art Enthusiast Holiday Gift Guide

Fellow art nerds, assemble! Some of my favorite items to express how much you love the visual arts. If none of the things vibe with you, I recommend donating to your local theaters and community art groups as they are all looking for support while keeping their artists safe.

1. Postcards do Bem by LOJA by Barbara Astrini| 2. Thank You Stamps by Dana Tanamachi | 3. Basquiat Corkcicle Canteens

4. This Joy I Have The World Didn’t Give It by Christa David | 5. “Stop Stealing Tote” by Jasmine Mans

Entrepreneur Holiday Gift Guide

Your entrepreneur friends always need a gift, no matter what they say. We are running around and we’re thriving in making it up as we go along. Supporting small businesses while uplifting your friends who own small businesses is a win-win anyway. 10/10 would recommend.

1. Emma Design Squarespace Kit by JDS Creative Studio| 2. Classic Polka Dot Customizable Planner – Undated / Open Dated by June Paper Market | 3. Grinding All My Life Pin by Adé Hogue

4. Explore: Journey from Fear to Happiness by David Yarde | 5. In the Company of Women by Grace Bonney| 6. DSA Magic Girl Keycaps Round 2 by Mintlodica

Plant Lovers Holiday Gift Guide

If you follow me along on my very rare Instagram sharing journey, you probably know that I, too, have fallen into the trap of millennials with plants. What better way to raise your serotonin levels, than with plants that spark joy? If you’re not sure where to start, never fear, I’ve got some gems below.

1. Jungle Dreams Notebooks by Castlefield Design| 2. Ficus Elastica Burgundy Rubber Plant by Botany | 3. Wild at Home Book by Hilton Carter

4. Buried In Plants Where I Belong Tote Bag by Jungalow | 5. Macrame Plant Hanger No. 1 by Eco Vibe| 6. Tall Painted Clay Planter by The Jungalow

Holiday Gift Guide for Kids

If you don’t interact with kids, it’s not the easiest to just jump in and buy a gift for one. There are various things to consider and so many places to buy gifts. Here are some fun things I’ve found that aren’t your typical pickup in your local superstore.

1. Constellation Kids Tee by Jessica Hische| 2. The ABCs of HBCUs (Board Book) by HBCU Prep School | 3. Who Will You Be? by Andrea Pippins

4. Double-Sided Pre-Writer Shape and Squiggle Board by Schoene and Son | 5. Black Lives Matter – Love ASL Print from Nicole Marie Paperie 6. Little Likes Kids – Fun Outside 48 Piece Floor Puzzle

Home Holiday Gift Guide

If you’re looking to try some fun things at home or buy for friends who may be living in a new space, here is the gift guide for you. It’s been a good time to try some new products from companies you may not ever have had the opportunity to support to help make your living space a home.

1. Rose Body Scrub from Luna Nueva Apothecary| 2. You Are Your Best Thing by rayo and honey | 3. Rise & GRND – Coffee Blend, Medium Roast by Blk & Bold

4. Matcha Set by Junbi Matcha| 5. 2021 Sun Wall Calendar by Under the Sunlight 6. Playful Marks (Golden) Tea Towel by Ritual Morning Studio

The post 2020 Small Business Holiday Gift Guide appeared first on Studio 404 Paper.

Hey friends! We are continuing with the Artist Showcase series after five years of hiatus. I’m thrilled to restart this series to interview and showcase amazing creatives that I’ve found influential for me and are willing to share information about themselves. It’s 2020 and I enjoy having a space to showcase creatives without having to do so many things or even pay to be featured. It’s a bit of the old-school blog vibes that I miss.

Today’s guest is someone who I’ve been following in the blog world from way back when. She has been so inspiring to me, personally, and I’m grateful to have been following her journey via Instagram. She’s grown so much creatively since I stumbled upon her blog and she is so supportive of other creatives.

Nikkita Cohoon is an artist who designs holistic brand identities for business owners with big vision to help them convey their value with clarity and build trust with their people. She also designs patterns, art, products, and planners to help you find the ritual in the everyday and make the everyday a ritual.

What are your favorite ways to create? 

For branding, I work mostly digitally, but I always start in my sketchbook because I love working by hand. I love trying a variety of techniques including printmaking, playing in Procreate, painting on ceramics, and working with ink.

How did you start Ritual Morning Studio?

After getting my MFA in poetry, I started work as a communications director for a non-profit management company. My writer friends often needed posters for readings, banners for their blogs or websites, and different promotional materials, and I also started designing books for a few poetry presses. I realized I loved helping creative professionals and businesses translate their vision into holistic design, so branding was the natural combination of those things. I started creating patterns for some of my clients and fell in love with surface design as well.

Where do you often find inspiration? 

I take a lot of walks and am always snapping pictures of different elements of nature that I encounter, or even collecting specimens. I’m inspired by architecture and the geometry found everywhere you look. I love the bold graphic appeal of vintage paperbacks, and I used to collect lots of collage material and inspiration from a book repository in grad school. I’ve always loved patterns found on textiles, wallpapers, and inside book covers. Really I’m just always filing away visual information!

How do you find a balance between your service-based offerings and your retail business?

My clients are always a high priority for me, and I truly gain inspiration from the collaborative process of creating a brand identity. But I also find it necessary to follow my own creative curiosity, and I love seeing things I create on tangible objects that can enter people’s homes and give them a moment of joy, pause, or reflection. I find with each season the different things I do ebb and flow, so I can focus on what is most needed at the time.

How do you find your voice among all of the design trends?

While I’m aware of some trends because I’m part of the design community and love seeing what my friends are doing, my design work is always informed first and foremost by my clients themselves. We spend a lot of time in the discovery phase developing a strategy that considers who will actually be seeing the designs, how they will interact with it, what they’ll be attracted to, the impression the design might make. Those are the driving factors for choices like color, type, and the design itself. For branding especially, we’re trying to create designs that will hold up as time passes, and grow with the business. So I’m using my voice to express that, rather than speak to a trend.

What has been your biggest challenge as a creative?

I’m a very creatively curious person, and for the most part this serves me well. But I don’t have time to do all my ideas justice (at least at one time), so my biggest challenge is focus and what to give time to when.

What advice would you give other creatives who are thinking about opening their own business?

First, is it something you truly want for yourself, and do you have something to offer that people need or want? Sometimes people see a person creating, doing, or making something unique and tell that person they should start a business. So I want to say first it’s great to do something just for the JOY of it and it doesn’t have to be a business because someone told you it could be.

But there are also people who just have that entrepreneurial bug and they will feel that calling regardless of what those around them say. For those people I would say make sure you’re ready to wear all the hats, because early days of running your business especially you’ll be spending just as much time on accounting, administration, client/customer management, and logistics of running a business as you will with the creative component (and sometimes more). Make sure you take a lot of notes on what’s working and what isn’t, track your time so you have a realistic picture of how you’re spending it, and set up systems to help automate what you can.

Connect with Nikita: Portfolio | Instagram 

The post Artist Showcase: Nikkita Cohoon of Ritual Morning Studio appeared first on Studio 404 Paper.

Hey friends! It’s been a little over a month that I finished my first (maybe only?) 100 Day project. For those of you who are unaware, The 100 Day Project is a global art project that anyone can participate in. The goal is to create a work of a art every day for one hundred days. I was very much inspired after seeing Allie Lehman complete her 100 Day Project last year but as you know, I have a hard time being consistent with side projects.

I spent the whole year waffling back and forth on doing the project but when it was announced that it was starting on my birthday, I don’t think I had much more of a choice in the matter. I think I decided on Allie’s Heart + Hustle episode to go forth and make art for one hundred days. Spoiler: I did complete the project but through the process, this would prove to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done to challenge myself creatively.

Persistence is Challenging

Hi, I have a problem with sticking to things that aren’t a large part of my day job. It’s very easy for me to put things on the back burner, especially things that seem to only be for me. When I originally thought of doing this project, I really wanted to do charcoal pieces. I had a short period of time in middle school where we worked with charcoals and I really enjoyed it. It’s also something I’m not great at and I really wanted to challenge myself beyond my creative boundaries. Persistence is challenging enough. During the first month, I was more than happy that I decided to do something that was still challenging but not something I would get bored of.

Staying in Your Lane

By acknowledging that persistence was most of the battle, it allowed me to really look at my project for what it was as a creative challenge for myself.

• I’ve never worked extensively with watercolor as a medium prior to this project.
• I’m OK with lettering but it’s certainly not something I had time to practice everyday.

It’s so easy to get into the comparison trap, especially when dealing with such a widespread project. I spent day one obsessing over the hashtag and all of the amazing projects that were being done. I kept thinking why hadn’t I have been more original or clever but at the end of the one hundred days, I was actually pretty proud of that I stuck to the original goal. The less I focused on others was the more I enjoyed this project. Of course, I loved supporting the other creatives but in a healthy, noncompetitive way.

Don’t Create Excuses

Did I get to do this every single day? Of course not. By the last thirty days, I was so overrun with recovering from travel and trying to get work done that it was struggle to push through. However, I did learn through the beginning is to not make excuses for myself. It’s not easy being consistent but once I saw the value in the project for myself, I really didn’t allow myself to get distracted for small things. It was also nice to have a sort of “end of workday” before slipping into relax mode. I have some self discipline which I really have gained through creating fitness goals so applying that mindset to this was easier than I expected it to be.

Art is Hard

Art is hard in general. It’s not easy devoting myself to creating artwork outside of my work. I’m a designer and by nature, design is art with purpose. I know that’s subjective and not all design is meant to be art but my training in graphic design was based on my need to create art outside of a traditional medium. I’ve always been involved in writing, sketching, and moving into design was a great fit for me. However, creating art every day is hard. It wasn’t easy traveling with watercolors. They almost got confiscated at JFK airport. Playing with colors, negative space, technique, brushes were all things that I didn’t think I had time for and couldn’t have imagined myself loving beforehand.

The point is that art is hard, y’all. Support your artist friends. See their shows. Listen to their music. Comment on their photographs. It’s not easy being vulnerable and putting a piece of you out into the world every day. I hated it. I didn’t like that people were allowed to critique (not that anyone did) what I was doing. Receiving feedback isn’t the easiest for me which is why I enjoy creating and then shoving everything in a drawer. Creating art is an act of resistance and it’s true.

Moving Forward

What’s great is that I’m now able to move forward knowing I did something that I’ve failed to do in the past. I created one hundred piece of original watercolor lettering art. Were they all good? Of course not. Did I enjoy every piece? Obviously not. There are some things that I knew I was in a rush to create or was too tired to focus. The point is, I did something that I challenged myself to do which was my goal. I have shared some originals with friends or people who piece were created specifically for. However, this is the fun thing! I’m selling 50 of the pieces right here on Studio 404 Paper. These things are all different sizes, different papers, and so there’s crazy different prices. These are all originals so please know they were painted by my giant Shaq hands and I’d love for them to have a place to live in your spaces!

All month you can get them with free shipping using the code 100DAYS! Otherwise, I am always on Twitter and Instagram doing weird stuff. Every week, you can check in with me at Heart + Hustle Podcast. I will be announcing some other speaking dates soon! Until next time, shop small, shop local, and buy more art.

The post Things I Learned from The 100 Day Project appeared first on Studio 404 Paper.

TGIF! I’m not even sorry for the barrage of typography that’s coming your way. This week was extremely challenging but now that it’s Friday, I realized how much I accomplished. The site design for Studio-404 is completely finished and has been sent to development. I just finished a quick but fun project with Carmen of The Flair Exhcange, who I just met in the past few months through Sunshine Bloggers. We’re almost halfway complete with our latest client project which is a bit whimsical and definitely unique. I started my Creative Couples feature this week featuring Melissa & Nick. I have tons of other things knocked off my to-do list but it’s just funny how it all looks great today. If you would have asked me about my week on Wednesday, I don’t think I would have felt as confident. Anyway, enough of me and more of inspiration!

I am in love with this logo Meredith of Hazel Wonderland shared this week for Knit Collage. The colors are very vibrant which is perfect for these last few days of summer. The branding has so many fun floral elements which Meredith did a great job of putting together. I would definitely visit the blog to see more .

I’ve featured the work of Kristin Nohe here before but I couldn’t help but share this illustration she posted on her Tumblr blog this week. Waffle House is such an Atlanta staple and it’s pretty lame that it’s not as big of deal here in Florida. I mean, there is now a Waffle House at Turner Field. It’s serious business fellow Floridians!

Speaking of illustrators I’ve showcased here, Type Worship posted a fun interview with illustrator Mary Kate McDevitt.  I could spend all day reading about the lives of other creatives. I love hearing where they got started and what they enjoy working on. It’s a great read so I encourage you to check it out if you have the time.

Can I just move to the city already? I would love to spend a day in this loft space in Tribeca. Reading Laura’s blog always makes me wish I was in NYC and looking at amazing (expensive) homes in the city doesn’t help.

Typography details are my favorite part of wedding invitations. I would have never thought to pair Aphrodite Slim with Museo Slab but it works!  This designer couple had an eye for type and they knew exactly how to execute their ideas.

What’s not to love here? Type, stripes, and monochrome are all a great combination in my book. Shanghai designer Jiao Tong’s numerals look amazing. Also, how awesome is the ribbon effect? Love!

Jen of Honey Kennedy posted a great tribute showcasing the work of Ruth Asawa. Her wire sculptures are beyond amazing. It’s so great to share work by artists within other mediums from time to time.

I know you are probably wondering how this ended up in the list this week but it’s amazing for several reasons. I’ve been trying to showcase Root Photography on the blog since I saw their work about three years ago. I was working with an event company and Nathan and Jensey shot their wedding so I instantly fell in love with their work. Fast forward to today, the husband-and-wife team shoot here in Celebration all of the time but there’s never been a shot at Starbucks. It was pretty neat to see these stylish roommates choose to highlight my favorite place in town in their awesome shoot. You have to check out the rest of the pictures. I want to be friends with these two.

I was extremely inspired by this postcard by Meera Lee Patel featured on Oh So Beautiful Paper this week. Constellations and astronomy-themed stationery has been inspiring to me over the past few years and Meera is extremely talented.

This is only a small snapshot of what you get when you combine great lettering artists with Pixar quotes.  I’m not a big fan of Pixar but I do love great type.  So if you are of fan of both, you’ll enjoy looking through the Pixar Typography Book.

If you’re into reading more from me, check out my answers to the Liebster Award post over on Sunshine Bloggers. I know I was nominated for a Liebster some time ago and by the time I remembered, months had passed so I hope this counts! I’m also overdue for a Blogging 101 post so check that out later today. Have a great weekend! I’ll be spending Sunday with the Sunshine Bloggers ladies and I can’t wait.

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